Dr Who The Other Eden Part One
by E J Lamprey
Summary: Things have changed a bit in the other Eden. For one thing, they've now got unicorns and werewolves… not everyone's pleased about it, especially the ones who haven't got unicorns and werewolves. While the Doctor is sorting that out, Donna's not sure whether she wants to fall for the totally outrageous Rory or slap him, but he's certainly interesting?


DR WHO - THE OTHER EDEN – PART ONE

_About this book : Things have changed a bit in the other Eden since they learned how to use a fairly astonishing Device. For one thing, they've now got unicorns and werewolves… _

_Not everyone's pleased about it, especially the ones who haven't got unicorns and werewolves. While the Doctor is sorting that out, Donna's not sure whether she wants to fall for the totally outrageous Rory or slap him, but he's certainly interesting - _

_There are two adventures in this one visit, separated into two parts. _

DR WHO - THE OTHER EDEN – PART ONE

©E J Lamprey January 2013

FOREWORD – 1652 – EN ROUTE TO SOMERS ISLAND

"Land ahoy!" the cry rang down from the lookout and all five children sprang up from where they had been listlessly taking lessons with their governess.

"Mevrouw, can we go on deck!"

"Oh, please, Mevrouw!"

Their cries beat at her aching head – ah, how she had hated this voyage! – but she was nothing loath to see their destination at last. They were due to make landfall over a week ago! It was a matter of record that her own country's sailors were the best in the world, sharing mastery of the seas with the Portuguese, but this was an English ship. She had feared all along that the English, for all that they had been trying to escape their own little island for a hundred years or more, weren't up to navigating safely halfway across the world. Her brother, himself a captain with the Dutch East India Company, had reassured her that the English were becoming great sailors. He added in his droll manner that a few Dutch ships had foundered in the same area, never to be seen again, while the English settlement on Somers Island had been founded by shipwreck. You may not be able to get back, he had teased, but you should get there. And,

He reminded her it was too good an opportunity to miss. Which was true – her lord was a member of the English royal family – a minor member, but highly regarded – and her lady was a Dutch noblewoman. Her place in their family as governess to their children would assure her a good standing in the small community they were joining. But they had already been days longer at sea than expected, the Captain telling them he had plotted a more circuitous route to avoid pirate activity. .

Her momentary distraction was interrupted by Lady Janet tugging pleadingly on her skirts, and she rose to her feet. Land, any land, even if they were off course, would be a welcome break in the monotony of the voyage!

"If you take care, and stay with me, and out of the way of the sailors, we can go on deck" she said sternly. "And if we are sent below, there will be no arguing, is that understood?"

They assured her that it was, even as the door opened to admit their mother's lady in waiting. "Are you coming up?" She asked, smiling "I think we will all be very glad to see land!"

Between them the two women helped the smaller girls up the steep steps to the deck, and led them all to the rear where the pigs and hens were stored. It was a favourite place for the girls, who had made pets of the piglets and had taken for themselves the duty of collecting the daily eggs, but now they ran to their mother, already standing by the rail and gazing at the distant smudges on the horizon.

"Is that it, Moeder? Are we nearly there?"

"There" she pointed, smiling "And Papa will be waiting for us, so before we land we must make ourselves fit to be seen. But for now we can enjoy the approach."

The children clung to the railings and peered through them eagerly. The sea smacked at the sides of the ship's stout timbers as her trim was adjusted. The shouts of the sailors as they took in the mainsail and broke out the more maneuverable navigation sheets added zest to the excitement. And then, suddenly, the shouts changed to cries of alarm. The sails were collapsed and the huge splash of the anchor was followed by the ship jerking to rest, knocking the smaller children off their feet and making the women grab at the rails to steady themselves.

"Carelessness!" the governess stooped hastily to little Lady Mary as she started to wail. Her employer wasn't even looking at her tumbled children but still staring over the rail, shock in her face. The governess followed her gaze – and blinked. Where, moments before, there had been distant smudges, now land rose ahead and even to the sides of them. The deep grey sea had been replaced by clear water rippled only by the ship tugging gently at its anchor and there was white sand below the water, seemingly close enough to touch.

"My lady!" the chaplain was hurrying to join them on his skinny, slightly comical legs. "My lady, I was standing with the Captain when this happened! I fear we are - " he swallowed, then tried again to say the impossible, unthinkable news the captain had just given him. "We are not – this is not – Somers Island."

"Is he sure?" She'd regained her calm. "Then where are we?"

"He will take readings from the stars, tonight. For now, we should just go below and pray."

"I don't think so" she smiled faintly "If you look behind us, we are almost completely encircled by rocks, in what I believe is called a lagoon. Wherever we are, It seems to me we are trapped, but I put all confidence in the captain. He may yet find a way for us to sail free of the trap, but if we can it won't be before he has had a chance to study the stars and plot our position. Therefore I ask that you arrange for one of the longboats to be put in the water, so the children and I can enjoy a few hours on land and perhaps learn where we are. It seems a pleasant enough place. I rely on you to wait on board until there is news, but we will need a couple of the officers to bear us company and ensure our safety."

He bowed – it hadn't take him long to learn that his master's Dutch wife expected always to get her own way - and hurried back. Trapped! Unthinkable! It was one thing to have taken this post, with the chance to live with a high-born, wealthy family in a tropical paradise, quite another to be castaway in a place that shouldn't exist! What if he really was? What if Lady Williamson was right, and they never could sail to their real destination, and he was left with an employee who had only tolerated his presence because he represented her husband's religion? With a crew that was basically agnostic and paid lip-service to religion through custom and even fear? What role would there be for him as they waited for rescue? A dozen rough sailors, a handful of officers, a stubborn and willful woman, and her spoilt children?

The rush of fear was so sudden, and so vivid, he caught at the rail to steady himself and stared blindly at the tranquility of the lovely beach. Movement against the blond sands snapped his attention back to the shore and he narrowed his eyes against the glare. His eyesight was unusually good for distance – ironically, he struggled to read his Bible, or see clearly close at hand – but he couldn't quite identify the sparkles or flashes of reflected light. They seemed to come from smaller shapes circling the ragged men waving at them, but he couldn't make out whether the men were trying to attract their attention or beat off the flashing creatures. It did seem to be the former, and after just a moment he hurried to where the Captain and his officers were staring back at the reef they had somehow crossed.

"Captain, your telescope! There's people over there, and I believe those aren't rocks on the beach but the wreckage of other ships!"

The Captain whirled and studied the figures gesticulating on the shore before passing the telescope to his first mate. "Well spotted, pastor, you must have good eyes. I had myself noticed the ships, how they have been dragged ashore and stripped. It seems they were unable to escape this lagoon, but I'd feared the survivors had soon died. Instead, I believe we may be here for a while."

"So think I." He passed on his mistress's request, and the Captain rubbed his chin, then nodded.

"I'll send a shore-party first, to see how hostile the natives are. Unless the situation looks desperate, I'll go ashore with the passengers myself. No point in keeping to our boat – if the natives are hostile they will have us eventually. By going forth in confidence and friendship we may make friends and find help in our dilemma. There have been rumours before, my friend, of ships that vanished between one day and another, even in clear water with good winds. I think we might have found out what happened to them, eh?"

"I'd heard that too" the chaplain blurted "but I was told it was near the Bermuda islands?"

The Captain, who'd already started to turn away, turned back, astonished and laughing. "My friend! Did you not know that Somers Island is the name the British have given to the Bermudas?" .

CHAPTER ONE

"Well, well, well" the Doctor bent closer over the little screen, while a delighted beam spread over his face "well, WELL, well!"

"What's rocked your TARDIS?" Donna came up behind him with two mugs of tea and put one down next to his hand. He absently moved it further from the delicate mechanics and promptly forgot it as he switched his beam to his companion.

"Want to see a unicorn?"

"No such thing" Donna objected, but looked obediently at the screen. "That's just a pony standing next to a tree – oh." The thermal image moved and turned as two more joined it. "I thought they didn't exist?" she accused and the Doctor practically danced with delight.

"They don't! Not in our dimension, and not any more, but a few thousand years ago someone did open a Portal and for a short while Earth had all sorts of dragons and unicorns and all the creatures that you remember now as myths. Only thing is" he sobered and rubbed his jaw reflectively "we're traveling in real time at the moment, and that's not Earth."

"So, it's the place the Portal opened to?"

"No, they don't exist in our dimension anywhere. According to the TARDIS I've been here before. I can't always remember things that happened to my earlier versions but I definitely wouldn't forget unicorns. So someone's opened another Portal and that's worth looking into – "

The TARDIS settled and whooshed itself into solid shape, and after the briefest of pauses the door was jerked open. The Doctor stepped out eagerly onto springy green grass, vivid with clumps of flowering gorse, dotted with trees, awash with early-morning sunshine, insects droning and – rather disrupting the classical picture of an English countryside in summer - a small herd of unicorns, watching him warily. The stallion, silvery white with a foot-long horn, yarped warningly at him and the mares whickered at the black foals edging curiously forward, summoning them back. "Donna, you have to see this!"

"Any ogres?" Donna appeared more cautiously in the doorway. It wasn't that she didn't enjoy new things and new places, she did, but she'd trustingly bounced out into a few sticky moments in the recent past. Her nerves, while standing up to the strain, appreciated a little wariness.

"No, just unicorns and – yes, I thought so!" he pointed at a large bird perched in the tree above the unicorns "See that? That's a phoenix!"

She looked curiously at the big bird, brown-feathered and ordinary, which opened one eyelid to study her in return. "Looks like a regular bird to me. How come you said _A_ phoenix?" She ventured out, careful to keep the Doctor between herself and the restlessly wary stallion. "I thought there was only ever one, that was the point?"

She tilted her face to the sun gratefully. Their last stop had been in an underground city and they could call it artificial daylight if they liked but as far as she was concerned nothing came close to the real thing. Out of the corner of her eye she caught movement and jerked her head around. The unicorns had decided they didn't pose an immediate threat and had lowered their heads to graze again, although the stallion still had his head up, watching them. The movement had been the phoenix, stretching his wings before wrapping himself up again and clicking his beak sleepily.

"They're very territorial, you only ever see two together when they're mating – and they're very private about that, so it's hardly ever been witnessed. But there's nearly always one travelling with unicorns. It's one of the great mysteries of that dimension – whoa, don't go any closer!" He caught at her arm as, her face softening, she crouched and clicked her fingers to an inquisitive coal-black foal that had skipped forward from behind its mum.

"Why?" But she straightened obediently. On their travels her natural bolshiness was increasingly tempered by his greater experience. "Will the big one attack me?"

"You can't get close to them. Well, you couldn't back in the day, when they were on Earth – there's a protection on them. Something to do with them being out of phase, they look all here but if you try to get within touching distance something will happen."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. But there'll be something"

"You'll turn to stone" a voice said behind them and they whirled to face a teenage boy who had just rounded the TARDIS.

"Stone? The Medusa protection?" If anything the Doctor looked even more delighted. "Hello! I'm the Doctor and this is Donna, who are you?"

"I'm Harry " the boy nodded towards the herd "I'm on duty today"

"Duty?" Donna shook hands and then interrupted herself to peer closely at the boy. "Hey, you look human?"

"Waddya expect, a nelf?" Harry looked deeply offended and she said hastily

"Sorry, he" with a nod at the doctor "said we weren't on Earth – "

"Course we are!" Teenagers manage to look affronted most of the time but this one was really stretching the body language. He turned his back on her and said to the doctor, with a definite touch of smugness "and we know why phoenixes always travel with unicorns. My research team cracked it! "

"Excellent, I love solving mysteries!" the doctor rubbed his hands together gleefully "Fill me in!"

"Yers. We should go into the hide, we're unsettling the herd". They followed him round the TARDIS to a thicket of gorse with an unexpected doorway. Inside they found a well-built hide with several viewing windows, four comfortable swivel chairs, and two sets of bunk beds. On one of the bunk beds another youth was sprawled out, deeply asleep.

"That's Luke, don't mind him, he can sleep through anything – he slept through the racket that box of yours made, dint he? He's here for the late shift, but at this time of year it's better to sleep here and be on the spot. I slept here last night and I'm on duty all day, at sunset I clear off and the next guy – well, girl, really, next shift – comes in to kip here. Any problems we can wake the sleeper and at least there's two of us. Tea?" he added as if the thought of waking up had triggered an automatic response, and they both nodded. He busied himself quickly and quite tidily at a side table, handing Donna's cup to her with noticeable under -enthusiasm before dismissing her from his notice again.

"So, the symbiosis?" the doctor prodded gently and Harry took one of the viewing seats, swung it with something of a flourish to face them and adopted a didactic air.

"The unicorn foals – you noticed – are born black. They lighten in colour as they get older" he lectured. "An adult unicorn needs hardly any sleep, because it eats all the time, but the babies are the other way round, they sleep a lot, especially at night. Their colour is to protect them from their natural predator - "

"Yes, but the phoenix?" Donna interrupted – his pompous lecturing style was getting straight up her nose – but the boy ignored her loftily

"-their natural predator, the werewolf, which is photophobic and only hunts at night. As night falls the foals settle down in one spot to sleep, watched over by a phoenix. If the phoenix senses the presence of werewolves it starts to glow and – I did say photophobic, didn't I? That means" he said very patronizingly to Donna "they can't tolerate light? If the werewolves are hungry or greedy enough to persist it will actually burst into flame, not regular flames but like a magnesium flare? That hurts HUMAN eyes, it's like acid spray to a werewolf. And the reason the phoenix is happy to do this for the unicorns is that its only predator is a zichty, an onzichtbaar. You know them?"

"Onzichtbaar?" the Doctor shook his head "But it sounds like the Dutch word for invisible?"

"You speak Dutch?" Harry looked pleased "our team leader is Dutch, she named them. Invisible and virtually undetectable, and they hunt by day, while the phoenix is sleeping. But unicorns can detect it, and they fuss until the phoenix wakes up and takes off. It's safe in flight – and it's safe near unicorns."

"Brilliant! The perfect symbiotic relationship. So, that's unicorns, phoenixes, werewolves, onzichtbaars and? What else comes through the Portal?"

"That's the lot. And the werewolves only come through when it's dark, they never sleep this side."

"Why do they bother, if they never get to eat?" Donna objected and Harry looked annoyed.

"They do. Get to eat, I mean, just they WANT to eat foals but they GET to eat older unicorns that can't keep up with the herd. And the yearlings are vulnerable when their spots come through."

"Spots? Unicorns have acne?"

"Dapples". The boy on the bed sat up unexpectedly and joined the conversation, rubbing his eyes. "When they're going lighter they reach a point where they're dappled all over. It's perfect camouflage in moonlight and they get brave and slip away from the safety of the herd. Plus a young dapple can kill a werewolf, one on one, so they get quite bold as well. The werewolves count on it."

Donna shuddered and the Doctor flashed her a grin and bent to peer with interest through one of the viewpoints. "So, from here, you get to see all of this?"

"Pretty much" Harry said confidently "this is the heaviest growth area and unicorns are quite territorial. While the herd stays around here, everything happens here. There are other viewing hides as well, not as well kitted out as this but you can keep up with the herd, mainly the visitors use them. This is a quiet time of year, normally we have lots of visitors in the day and some hoping to see a hunt at night. You can come back tonight if you like?"

"We'd like that very much" the Doctor said briskly, ignoring Donna's aghast look at him "but in the meantime, how do we get to town? Need to stock up on supplies, that sort of thing."

"You're walking?" the boys exchanged a glance, then Luke shrugged and Harry nodded.

"Head north from here" he pointed helpfully "there's a path that becomes a track, then a road. You can't miss it from there"

"Well, thanks very much. Just one thing – when I've seen these creatures before they couldn't eat in this dimension unless they brought their own food through. It was mainly hunters wanting a quiet place to eat their kill undisturbed, or creatures that wanted somewhere to give birth where the hunters were already fed. Your unicorns are grazing here? What do you grow?"

"Regular gorse" Harry grinned suddenly "catnip to unicorns"

"Mrs. B used a special additive" Luke said mildly "there's gorse everywhere but the herds stay here in the bits she treated."

"Mrs. B?"

"The local I Am" Harry sneered "The Great Dictator".

The other boy rolled his eyes – this looked like an old argument – but didn't comment, saying instead "so, we'll see you tonight then? Well, I will, Harry finishes his shift at sundown but I'm on until midnight."

CHAPTER TWO

The hide was in a natural valley, and to anyone who'd been underground or in the TARDIS for a while the trudge up the slight slope was a positive pleasure. The ground was dry but not parched, seagulls floated overhead, making their unearthly cries, and a couple of cotton-wool clouds drifted harmlessly across a deeply blue sky. It was sunny, and warm, and very peaceful, and Donna reveled in the moment. There'd been some scary moments at their last stop, and a lot of running, as always with the Doctor, and a very nasty predator to be vanquished. The werewolves sounded positively harmless by comparison. Certainly the boys hadn't seemed too perturbed by them.

"I liked him" Donna said as they followed the most north-running of the paths winding through the gorse "Luke, I mean. Can't say I took to Harry"

"Well, teens" the Doctor said generously "They're doing a very responsible job, and looks like they do it well, you've got to allow for some attitude. Is it just me or can you smell something stinking?"

"Garbage collectors on strike?" Donna pulled a face "Don't think much of their hygiene, do they just dump all their rubbish at the edge of the town? That's just bloody gross" Untidy heaps of garbage were dotted to either side of the track, and squawking squabbling seagulls flapped away at their approach, to settle on further heaps.

"Odd." The Doctor slackened his usual headlong pace. "It's all in a line, not just dumped everywhere. Like they're marking the perimeter of the town, maybe to keep the werewolves away? And it all looks fairly fresh – oh, okay!" He let Donna, who was trying to breathe through her mouth because the growing stench was bringing tears to her eyes, pull him forward. "Hello, here's the track, and there, look, the first houses. Just out of stink range."

"Looks just like Scotland" Donna looked dubiously towards the neat little stone houses in the distance "and that Harry did say this was Earth, what was that about?"

"Well, that's a whole other question. This place is sometimes called the other Earth – I've also heard it called Eden, but back when I was here last the most common name was the other Eden. No Adam and Eve, though. It's a fascinating place, actually, a planet very like your Earth, but on the other side of the sun. Main difference is that this Earth is still one main continent which is dominated by a very evolved reptile population. What Earth would be like if the dinosaurs hadn't died out. I wonder if the continents stayed intact because this world wasn't formed around a chunk of Racnos? Anyway, the population didn't evolve here, we're on one of the main islands. You could say it was colonized from Earth."

"Colonists? Now hang on." It was Donna's turn to stop dead. "You said we were in real time? So – how come I never heard of this place?"

"Ah. Well, there were lots of stories about it, I know you're not really interested in that big picture stuff but even you will have heard of the Bermuda Triangle? At some point, don't know when, this planet created a link, almost a wormhole, to yours. The locals call it the shaft. If you swam or stepped or sailed or flew in the shaft on Earth at just the right angle, POW, you were whisked straight here. As best I remember the shaft earthed itself – there's a nice pun there – just outside the actual triangle – on the far side of it to North America. You'd think it would be heaving with Americans but there were hardly any Americans taken, because they never used that particular approach. Well, nobody deliberately used it, but there were a lot who misread their charts, or got slightly off course, and Bob's your uncle. And Eden's your new home."

"So this is what was behind the whole Bermuda Triangle question?"

"This is one of the answers. I don't think anyone's ever found all of them, but the shaft disappearances go back to – well, to the first days of sail. As more and more ships covered the oceans there were more cases. Then about thirty years or so ago the Gangions, an intergalactic peacekeeping team, picked up on it and closed the shaft down. I was actually part of the operation, to help anyone back to the Earth who wanted to go, because well, you know, the Gangions, lovely people, but scary to look at if you're a human who's never seen an alien before. So that was my role. Surprisingly few people wanted to return, not even all of the most recent arrivals – some had been here for generations of course, born here. They didn't have anything to go back for, and this is a lovely place, gentle climate, relatively easy life, nearly everyone ended up staying, but at least they had the choice."

They were now walking down the street, flanked by the small dwellings. The bungalows were attractive and well-maintained but unlike their equivalent on Earth there wasn't so much as a window-box or bird feeder to be seen. Weed-free stones and gravel, sometimes combed into elaborate shapes, framed neat little front paths, and colour came only from gaily painted front doors which were often matched to the curtains glimpsed in the flanking windows. The Doctor slowed his pace.

"There is one thing I ought to warn you about – they – well, they're people who were snatched from their own lives and dumped here without the option to ever go home. When I met them they were paranoid, hostile, superstitious, suspicious – most of them believed they'd been brought over as a food source, or to a human zoo, which would upset the calmest of characters. They were also a jumble of all walks of life, completely under the iron control of the community leaders and very anti any outsider trying to tell them what to do. Those kids were pretty normal so that might have changed in the last thirty years, but expect to meet all sorts of attitudes. Some very odd people ended up here."

"So what are you telling me, we're going to run into Lord Lucan?"

"Riding Shergar." The Doctor teased her as they neared an intersection with a much larger road "Hello, what's going on here?"

A short column of purposeful men in uniform marched four abreast down the wider street. Right in the middle of the group was a handcart, being pulled by four of the marchers. A woman sat alone in the hand cart, a light shawl over her head and a complete lack of expression on her face. Where any suggestion of a parade would have attracted a small crowd on Earth, here only the pale ovals of faces could be seen peering from the windows of the houses. Donna could also see the occasional onlooker standing under one of the trees scattered along either side of the road. Some of those were holding their fists to their mouths and talking animatedly, presumably into walkie talkies, their eyes fixed on the marchers. The Doctor lengthened his stride along the pavement to keep pace with Donna clucking in resentful pursuit, very aware of the astonished looks they were getting from the onlookers. She felt better when a few people hurried out from their houses, or from under the trees, to join them, and there were soon about thirty following by the time the soldiers broke formation. The handcart came to a complete halt and the soldiers wheeled to face the following crowd. "For shame!" a woman near Donna suddenly called and the small crowd rumbled. The Doctor glanced around, eyes very bright, and murmured to Donna "you thinking that's who I'm thinking it is?"

"I'm not from around these parts, you know. And that's not Lord Lucan" she whispered back, then did a tiny double-take. "What, the Great I Am?"

"Great minds" he said approvingly and, to a worried-looking man near him, "Excuse me, can you tell me who that is?"

"Mrs. B" the man confirmed hotly "and it's a bloody disgrace, so it is!"

A woman behind them tapped Donna angrily "As for you, young woman, there's no Great I Am about it. To be arrested like this – and pulled through the streets at this time of year? That's a disgrace, that woman has single-handedly brought health, order and prosperity to this town!"

"And iron rule and the complete loss of civil liberties, don't forget that" jeered a younger man.

"Oh, the local Maggie Thatcher, then." Donna said it under her breath but the youth heard her and looked blankly at her.

"No" he said patronizingly "that – is – Mrs. – B"

"I'm not an idiot thank you, and what's a Mrs. B when she's at home?" He turned his back but the original woman answered, with a touch of defiance

"She virtually runs the town. She controls the Device, and the Device has made Riddance rich.'"

"A Device, eh? I like Devices" the Doctor watched curiously as the soldiers remained impassive and unmoving but the small crowd began to eddy and disperse. A minute or two passed, then a command was barked, the soldiers turned again and formed up round the handcart, and marched away. This time no one followed The crowd broke up rapidly, with people looking variously satisfied, uneasy, or deeply worried. Several of them glanced at the sky as if, Donna thought fancifully, they thought the heavens would open and a stern angel appear. Or as it if was about to rain, but even the cotton-wool clouds had puffed themselves out of sight. One small group retreated under a nearby tree, talking hard, and the Doctor caught Donna's eye, jerked his head towards them, and loped over to join them.

'What do you suppose will happen now? I'm the Doctor, by the way, and this is Donna, we're new here, we don't know what's going on? I don't suppose anyone could take me to this Device, could you?"

The Doctor's typically direct approach seemed to astonish the others, who gaped at them in disbelief. One man finally introduced himself as Donald and said he would show them the way, setting off at a brisk pace.

As they rounded a corner Donna gasped aloud at the sight in front of her – a man with a knife and murder in his face lunging at an equally enraged man wielding a club. The scene seemed frozen in time – because, she belatedly realized, it really _was_ frozen in time. As they got closer she saw dust on both fighters, and where a cheeky bird had decorated the club wielder with a rakish white streak down one cheek. As they do.

"Turned to stone!" the doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and scanned the knife wielder. "No,still human?"

"Timelocked" Donald nodded. "It was part of opening the Portal. That freezing thing happens if we get too close to any of the creatures – or they get too close to us – but it also happens if anyone tries to hurt anyone else. Or if somebody has a bad fall, or is in danger, time stops for them."

'Well, that's no good!' Donna was horrified but the man laughed, the anxiety on his face momentarily banished.

"Not for ever – if it's a fall, say, someone calls the do-gooders and they wake them up – we call it re-starting, or unlocking. They restart the person. Things like this, fights, the peacekeepers just re-start them, think on it, you're trying to beat someone up and the next thing you know you're surrounded by PKs!"

"Peace – keepers?" Donna asked curiously and Donald looked surprised.

"You saw them earlier. Escorting Mrs. B?"

"I thought they were soldiers!"

"Sold – oh, like army? No, we don't have anyone but the peacekeepers, they're like a national organization. They – well, they keep the peace, if people get rowdy, and they just look after things." He looked appealingly at the Doctor, who said helpfully to Donna

"They don't have armies, or police, or security guards, or even lawyers here. That's all handled by the peacekeepers, nearly twenty percent of the population is with them in some way – or was when I was last here?" Donald nodded, his brow puckered at the – to him - unfamiliar words the Doctor was using. "People work part time or full time, do a year with them or make it a lifetime career – it's a very good system, actually. Like the do-gooders – you just said you still have them."

"Yeah, that's the name we give to all the people who work for the community. They help the elderly, looks after the sick, teach the children, that sort of thing. If you break the law and end up doing community service, you're sentenced by the peacekeepers but the actual punishment is overseen by the do-gooders? Anyway they don't re-start nasty jobs like these guys until someone requests it and no-one has yet." Donald returned to the original subject "They've been like that for ten years, when it's rained and they're cleaned off you'd think it had just happened. They weren't prisoners, of course, those always get carried back to their centre." He pointed to a larger building off to their left. "That's the jail. So to speak. So you really are the Doctor? The one from thirty years ago?"

"I really am." The Doctor reassured him. "In the flesh. So the Portal's been open for ten years?" he calculated as they walked on, Donna looking over her shoulder at the receding thugs, and their guide shrugged.

"''Bout that" he agreed. "In that time Riddance has gone from a sleepy little backwater to one of the most successful towns in the country, which has upset some of the other towns." He shrugged again "Matter of time, really, before something like this happened. We've been accused of robbing people of lives – like those two – and opening a Portal to killer creatures, and stripping people of everything they own – and of course operating a dangerous alien machine. Half the country considers the Device the original shaft, sucking aliens through from another world to kill us all. This is where we keep it, by the way."

He stopped in front of a larger building than they had seen so far, with beaten bronze doors.

"Nice doors" Donna said appreciatively "did those get sucked through the shaft as well?"

"As it happens" he nodded "they were originally on a cruise ship that came through. But we've got the skills and materials to make them, you can see copies all over the place"

"So the ship – like, just thumped down here in the street?" Donna was fascinated but annoyed when both men grinned at her. "Well, where then?"

"In the lagoon". He made that oddly unhelpful gesture – the pointing finger nearly tapping the shoulder, then sweeping the arm up and out to point in a general direction – which is supposed to imply distance. "That's where everything arrived through the shaft. Me, too – I was a nipper sailing with my parents off Bermuda, I slept through the whole thing, woke up to find my parents half-hysterical with fright. They grew to like it here, refused to go back when the chance came. They always said this was a paradise by comparison. It's okay. Anyway – " he pushed through the doors and led the way into a cool dim lobby with chairs and sofas against the long walls, and waved an encompassing hand.

"This is the waiting room. Those doors lead into the consulting rooms, and they all lead to the Device." He stopped and frowned. "There's something wrong. There's always people here – usually sitting waiting, someone at that desk, always at least one consultant on duty."

"Isn't there a bell?" Donna looked round, then raised her impressive voice. "Oi. SHOP!"

One of the consulting room doors jerked open and a slim, very pale, woman peered at them round it before, with a look of impending disaster, coming tentatively towards them.

"Donald! Is everything okay? Has something happened to Mrs. B? She's not answering her Talkie" she asked nervously. Donald brought her up to date while Donna wandered off round the room. It occurred to her that everything looked luxurious and quite contemporary, not at all like a set-up that had suddenly cut off from modern civilization thirty years ago. The furniture was covered in a smooth woven cream fabric with a reddish thread running erratically and very effectively through the weave, and the occasional tables were extremely well made and gleamed softly as though much polished.. There was a slim elegant water fountain that was smarter than anything she'd seen on Earth. She gingerly took an intricately folded waxed paper cup, filled it up, and sipped. Maybe just the long walk and the warmth of the day, but it tasted better than water usually did. The only jarring note was the series of paintings around the wall, which seemed to be studies of giant dragonflies, their wings an intricate mosaic of faceted stones, glitter and crushed foil. They weren't unattractive, but it looked very odd to have a series of four, the artist seemed a bit fixated. Probably, she decided, related to Mrs. B or someone on the staff.

"Pretty smart, eh?" the Doctor grinned at her as he prowled past her and she seized the chance to ask how it could all be so very – modern.

"Ah, well you've got to remember it was a pretty exclusive net the shaft scooped up" he looked around appreciatively. "The old-time sailors were rough, but very inventive, and then you would have started getting pilots, and the people who could afford to fly, and the cream of the navy, and the rich yachting types. Probably a lot more that never made it into the papers, especially government boats, and during wars. Plus when they had started to realize there was something going on, there was at least one ship full of scientists. That's when the Gangions heard about it."

"There's no women in that list" Donna objected "the population would have died out!"

"You'd think" he agreed "and most of the earliest crews shipwrecked here did. I seem to remember the turning point was a slaving ship carrying female slaves picked for their youth, health and beauty that got side-tracked on their way to being sold into a life of prostitution. Then in the last hundred years the rich old geezers on planes and yachts had their young trophy wives or mistresses, or daughters, and there was at least one cruise ship, the one with the bronze doors? Not too many lovelies on the science ships, probably, but young female research assistants will usually get picked ahead of their married male colleagues. You obviously didn't notice in that crowd, those women wouldn't have looked out of place as film extras."

"No, I didn't notice" Donna said primly, and shot a glance at the woman consultant. She'd automatically tagged her as middle-aged because her hair was coiled up in a stern bun, she wore pince-nez glasses, and lines of strain had bracketed her mouth and nose, but Donna had to concede that she made middle-aged look good. She was slender and healthy, and her skin, now that the colour was returning to her face, had a golden toffee tint Donna would have killed for. As though she felt Donna's stare she looked across, then came over, hand held out, to greet them.

"Donald says you're the Doctor, and you're Donna? I'm Susannah, I'm on duty in case anyone needs the Device but I hope nobody does because it's shut itself down." She gulped and for a moment looked as though she would cry. "When you say the Doctor - is that like a family name? Only this country had a visitor before who called himself the Doctor but obviously way before your time."

"Nope, that was me" the Doctor grinned and she frowned slightly.

"You aren't old enough" she objected and Donna snorted. The consultant glanced at her, then back at the Doctor. "And we've got pictures of you – of the Doctor. Not at all like you."

"Long story, and we've more important things to do at the moment, but trust me, I'm your Doctor. Now, what can you tell me about this Device of yours?"

"Oh, you can see it" she gestured them into the room she had emerged from. "If there's anything you can do – there's someone inside, and the Device won't let him out. There were patients waiting in reception and they heard this poor man yelling, so they've made a dash for it, and my fellow consultant got a call on his Talkie saying something was happening to Mrs. B and HE shot out of here and hasn't come back and I honestly don't know what's going on– to do something like this in honey month, it's crazy!"

As she was talking they had moved through the consulting room and emerged into a bigger room behind it. In the middle was a giant cube, perhaps ten feet square, which to Donna seemed to be made of tinted panels of glass and mirrors and silvery panels of nothing in particular. There were at least three types of material, in different sizes, and through one of the glass-like panels she could see a shadowy man slumped in a chair. "And now the Device is acting up, for the first time ever. That's it" she added unnecessarily.

The Doctor whipped out his sonic screwdriver and prowled round the whole cube, then walked back to join them, looking perplexed. "There's no control point?"

"No, its workings – its engine, I suppose – is built into its base, and everything else is done telepathically"

"Oh, very nice! So you would have telepathically told the Device what had to be done to this man – actually, can you walk me through that, from the beginning?"

"Yes, I suppose so – there's no secret about the way it operates. He, John Harper in there, he's from the other end of the country and was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Because of its position it couldn't be operated on. His doctor, who is a little more open-minded than most, asked if we, if the Device I should say, could help. So he arrived yesterday, stayed at the centre overnight, and was the first patient booked for this morning. I saw him, explained what was going to happen – " the Doctor twitched interrogatively and she blinked, then expanded helpfully "I told him he would go into the Device and it would vibrate his whole body briefly to set free his atoms, then it would siphon off the brain tumour and restore him to normal. Which it did, all of that, but then someone came running into the Centre to say there were peacekeepers marching into town, and the Device just – closed down. It usually glows slightly, or shines like a pearl, and of course it normally lets its patients out. Poor Mr. Harper, he looks as if he's collapsed now, but he's been shouting for forty minutes."

"I just need to get this straight – you don't actually program the Device?"

"Well – it's telepathic. So while we're telling the patient, the Device is listening. So we are careful to be very specific to the patient."

"And can it only listen in on what's happening in the Centre?"

She paused, considering, then shook her head. "I don't know. It might have picked up on the peacekeepers before we heard about them, and thought they were marching here to close it down? I mean, that's what we thought, when the first rumour came that they were on the march. I didn't even believe the first report, it was crazy that they'd take the risk at this time of year, but at the time we didn't know what they were doing. Now, of course it makes sense, it was probably the only time they could arrest Mrs. B without creating a riot. Anyway we spent some time speculating about it, I must have been out in reception for twenty minutes. Then when I came back to the treatment room – here – and saw that the Device had closed down. As soon as Mr. Harper realized I couldn't get him out he started screaming."

"So" The Doctor walked back to the Device and laid a gentle hand on the glass-like panel. "It probably hears anything that anyone thinks within – well, certainly within the town. I can think of a way of checking that. But it certainly can hear me, now. So if I tell you, you very clever Device, that we know what happened to Mrs. B and I'm the Doctor and I absolutely guarantee you that I'll get this sorted out, you can hear me and you'll trust me and let your hostage go?" There was a breathless pause and then the Device started to shimmer very gently. A section of the paneling slid back to create a door and the Doctor sprang through to help the dazed and unbelieving Mr. Harper to his feet.

CHAPTER THREE

"What I need to know" the Doctor said firmly "is everything you can tell me about the Device. You all know what it can and can't do and how it does it but you'll have to tell us before we move on. Honestly, it'll save time in the long run and stop me making any mistakes."

By now Donald had reappeared with two town councilors, one of whom the Doctor remembered from his earlier trip and who had soon been convinced of his identity, and the Doctor , Donna, the councilors and Susannah had settled in the treatment room to thrash through the situation. It was the Doctor's idea to base themselves next to the gently shimmering Device, so that it would feel part of the process, and at first the councilors had been quite uncomfortable, casting it unhappy glances and twitching their shoulders. Thomas Banks, the older, shrugged and spread his hands.

"We don't know its history" he said plaintively. "Mrs. B did, if anyone did, but she wasn't – " he stopped short, flinching, and shot a hunted look at the Device. It was an odd gesture in a man well over six feet tall and broad to match, and made her wonder just exactly the Device was capable of, to alarm a man who quite clearly wasn't easily alarmed.

"She isn't the easiest woman to talk to" Susannah said calmly. "You're not going to offend the Device, Thomas, if the Doctor is right and it can tune in on anyone in the town it certainly knows what people think of Mrs. B. The thing is that she doesn't make many friends. She and I aren't friends, I work for her, but I respect and admire her. She is very – direct. You know exactly where you stand with her."

"Calls a spade a bloody shovel?" offered Donna, and Susannah smiled but shook her head

"Not quite that, but that sort of thing. She has no patience with fools, and she absolutely detests bullies, anyone who frightens or intimidates or threatens others to get their own way. It doesn't help of course that she's a telepath, people are convinced she can read their minds at will, that they can't keep any secrets. I truly and honestly believe she wouldn't bother, even if she really could. She and the Device between them control things so that anyone who commits what she called crimes against the community gets the Device's equivalent of a slap on the wrist. Really violent, dangerous people just got stopped in their tracks, but somebody being nasty would get a jolt of pain, or suddenly get very weak and tired. Human nature being what it is, the bullies and fools resent her very much indeed, but they're a small enough minority that they either have to accept it or move to another town. Another thing that gets resented, we take in every criminal in the country, and the peacekeepers pay us – pay us rather a lot, actually - to do so. A lot of townspeople were unhappy about that but again, most of us knew that they wouldn't be able to commit any crimes here so they are a welcome source of income. But you asked for the history –" she paused to gather her thoughts, and looked enquiringly from one councilor to the other, both nodding in response.

"Well, we know nothing of the Device before it appeared. It certainly isn't of Earth origin, even though it must have come through the shaft. It was recovered from the lagoon as much as a century ago. We only started keeping records about eighty years ago and it was well back in the warehouse, recorded as a large metallic cube, no known function, on the first inventory. About twelve years ago one of the warehouse keepers with some telepathic ability found himself communicating with it. He got a financial partner and they bought it to use as a weight loss machine. I should explain, the Device needs body fat to operate – more accurately, the energy stored as fat in mammals. Mrs. B got very heavy after her husband died, to the point where she could no longer get about easily, and she was a volunteer in the testing program." She spread her hands. "She could communicate much better with the Device, and she realized what a waste this was of its abilities. She tried to buy it but they weren't selling. So the Device simply shut down and refused to work for anyone else. Thomas and Simon finally managed to buy it from the owners, and immediately brought it here to Mrs. B. The owners never forgave her and they've rattled their bars non-stop ever since. They're the main cause of all the bad publicity and hostility we've had from day one from the rest of the country. So anyway, she set up the Centre, which is self-funding. We charge huge prices for weight loss but it means we can offer the essential treatments, the tumours and cancers and general medical applications, for much less. The Device gets the power to operate, and in the process we cure most of our health problems, and everyone's happy. Anyway, that was the first couple of years. Then Mrs. B said she was going to use the Device to open the Portal. That gave us the timelock technology for what became our single biggest export. As a side-effect it gave us the unicorns, which are our pride and joy and something of a tourist attraction. However the richer the town became, the more resentful the rest of the country got and the wilder the accusations became. If we try to defend ourselves we're told we're brainwashed. The senior do-gooders even tried to put sanctions on timelockers - that's our export product – but too many people still wanted to buy them, so that didn't really work. The media ran stories saying the werewolves were out of control and attacking and killing townspeople, so our tourist industry dropped dramatically. The number of people coming to get their fat sucked has also dropped, which is potentially a problem. The main hostility has been at Mrs. B, and those peacekeepers were sent by the country's national do-gooder bodies. We don't know what the charges are yet, but they'll certainly be including variations on the things I've told you."

There was a silence when she stopped talking, which Donna broke by asking curiously. "Who or what are the do-gooders, then? You talk as though they run everything but Riddance?"

"Pretty much." Susannah agreed "It isn't official – put it this way, from the start of our recorded history the ship chaplains controlled the distribution of news, and all education. When people arrived through the shaft they had to join a do-gooder congregation just to be part of the community. All employment goes through the congregations and the town councilors communicate all news through them. It's basically impossible to get an education, serve an apprenticeship, find work or hear what's happening before the weekly newspapers are published without being linked to a congregation, unless you're in Riddance. People came here when they couldn't be bothered to play along, or had quarreled with the church elders and been boycotted, and over time we've set up our own schools and our own internal newspaper. We've got do-gooders here, I count as one, and so would Thomas and Simon, but we don't have congregations, it's more informal. It was a bit – raw – at the beginning but we're really proud of our town now."

Donna's eyes were popping. "So you're all seen as rebels? How many people are we talking about? In this town, and in the country?"

"About five thousand in the town" Thomas told her "and about seventy thousand in all."

"Wow" Donna was impressed "big island!"

"Not very wide, but nearly four hundred miles long" the Doctor murmured "still plenty of room? And you reckon" he looked at the others "that today's arrest of Mrs. B was generated by the do-gooders? Or by the original owners of the Device?"

"The original owners have certainly ensured the fuss never completely dies down. We've even tried offering them a percentage of what the Device earns but they weren't interested. Deeply resentful and hostile."

The Doctor shot Donna a glance that she interpreted as 'Remember what I told you?' and said to the others "What I don't understand is why she let the peacekeepers take her away. From what you're saying she could have told them to take a hike? They couldn't have forced her to go, that would have been bullying."

"I've been trying to work that out too." Simon, the other councilor, responded "The only thing I can think is that she's fed up with being called a tyrant who brain-washes the townspeople and runs things the way she wants them. By agreeing to go she's defused that particular argument. The most important thing we have to find out is what the charges are, and I've a cousin in the Peacekeepers. As soon as she hears she's promised to let me know immediately." He held up what looked exactly like a mobile phone. "I've got my Talkie on me at all times, and I think you or Donna should have one too. I've also brought charge cards, because you won't be able to buy anything otherwise."

"Well, that's very thoughtful of you" the Doctor , who had never carried money in his life, said unblushingly "Donna's got a mobile, if I could just have a look at your Talkie – thank you - I can probably jiggle hers to tune in? Very nice little thing, this – remarkably similar to something on Earth?"

"From the same source, I'd imagine" Simon grinned shyly "Directly modeled from Star Trek, ours was. That was huge in the sixties, when I left Earth, that's one thing we miss here, decent television. The one thing I never expected when I was lying on my stomach watching Captain Kirk was to end up on another planet myself!" He took it back, flipped it open and holding it to his mouth, Star Trek style, ordered "Beam me up, Scotty!"

"Yeah, we use ours like this" Donna held hers to her ear before handing it to the Doctor , who buzzed it with the sonic screwdriver, nodded, and handed it back. "What's your number and we'll give it a try, shall we?"

"Number?" Simon looked puzzled. He took both Talkies and touched them gently end to end, then spoke into his again "record Talkie for Donna." Handing hers back, he said again into his, "connect me to Donna". Her phone rang immediately and he flipped his shut. "That's all we do – if you want someone to be able to call you, you touch Talkies." He grinned "The teenagers love it. First time my daughter touched Talkies with a boy was practically a bigger thrill than her first kiss!"

CHAPTER FOUR

"So, we're walking again" Donna said resignedly as the Doctor strode at his usual impatient pace back down the road. It was now close on midday, and noticeably warmer. "Notice we're the only people around? No other walkers? No need for a Device to keep my weight down while I'm traveling with you, is there?"

"Weeelll" he drawled, and shot her a grin "now that you and Simon are going steady he can phone you when he hears anything more. There's nothing we can do until then. You didn't want to just sit and wait in the Centre, did you? There was a sort of map for visitors up on the wall there and the whole town seems based on this one main road with a few roads crossing it. There's no way we could actually get lost if we go looking for the town centre. Don't you find it amazing that a relative handful of people on one island have recreated nearly every technological development that seven billion people managed to come up with on Earth in the last thirty years? Never quite the same – the Talkies, and there don't seem to be any cars – but nothing completely different. Not completely. So I thought while we're waiting we can do some window shopping and really compare the two."

He peered through an archway set in a very high wall, then marched confidently through and they found themselves in a paved square. A fountain danced in the middle and long low buildings formed the sides with shuttered windows. The shutters were folded back to display their wares, and occasional doors stood invitingly open. There were a few people sitting on benches in dappled sunshine under pergolas. Others walked about, deep in conversation, probably, Donna suspected, about Mrs. B. The Doctor did a long slow turn on his heel and whistled appreciatively.

"Interesting layout – considering the climate, remember I told you it was mild? And yet nearly everything's under cover, you'd think this square would be crammed with tables on a day like this. You know what it reminds me of? Like a castle in days of old – in times of trouble the townspeople can retreat here, seal the shutters and lock themselves in with everything they need – water, food, clothing, medicines –" with a sweeping gestures at the windows.

"Well, yeah, if the towns go to war on each other. From everything we've heard, they're just rude to each other." Donna was unconvinced. "Anyway, wouldn't the Device stop any attack in its tracks?"

"Didn't always have the Device" the Doctor reminded her "And not necessarily attacks from other towns." He looked up at the sky thoughtfully "Do you know, I haven't seen a clickit since we got here? I've just realized"

"What's a clickit when it's at home, then?"

"Best pet ever." A tall man who'd been studying them with interest rose from a nearby bench, with a last lingering top-to-toe survey of Donna which made her blush. He was – well, not her type, dark red hair, although his skin was evenly tanned rather than freckled. Thick black lashes framed wicked blue eyes, his nose that would have made any plastic surgeon's fortune and his mouth – she blushed more hotly as his firm mouth twisted into a grin.

"Rory" he captured her hand and for a second she thought he was going to kiss it, but he just ran his thumb caressingly over her knuckles. "And VERY pleased to meet you. Who are you?"

"She's Donna Noble and I'm the Doctor" the Doctor said cheerfully. "So, what happened to the clickits?"

"Are you a couple?" Rory asked instead and the Doctor bent a severe stare on him.

"Are YOU related to Jack Harkness?" he demanded at the same time as Donna emphatically shook her head. She reluctantly released Rory's warm firm clasp so he could shake hands with the Doctor.

"Harkness? Don't think so" he grinned easily at the Doctor "and the clickits have flown. I knew who _you_ must be, the Talkies have been busy – you've seen clickits but don't know about the honey month, so you're not a New Earther but you've been here before. Thirty years ago, I'm told?" adding confidingly to Donna "before our time, of course."

She caught herself simpering and drew herself up hurriedly. Simpering! Just because he was taller and broader and more at ease in his own handsome skin than anyone she'd ever met!

"Clickits" he accepted the moment had ended "are enormous insects a bit like dragonflies. They're beautiful – well, their wings are – and friendly, affectionate to their owners and fiercely protective. You're right to look at the sky, Doc – this is the only month of the year that New Earthers are afraid."

"I saw them in action once" the Doctor agreed "on my last visit – as you say, thirty years ago. It was an incredible sight."

"You'll have to tell us" Rory crooked his arm at Donna, who was starting to feel left out, and waved his free arm at the nearest door. "If you'll both join me for coffee inside?"

As they entered the big building he added "any other time of year you're right, we could have it outside, but during honey month we lose our clickit protectors and people stay under cover. This, by the way, is the West Bazaar. Grocers, butchers, processed foods, and most of the restaurants."

Donna blinked. It really was like a bazaar, with shops open at the front, the dividing side walls great slabs of glass so that the overall impact was of colour and movement reflected and stretching back endlessly. There were children everywhere, running or crawling or being carried by older children, loosely orbiting adults or playing tag round the displays, shrieking with laughter. They were almost completely ignored by the adults who were intent on their purchases. She winced involuntarily as one lively little boy, looking back over his shoulder at his friends, ran full tilt into one of the glass walls. He bounced back to land heavily on his padded bottom, his face crumpled, and he let out a howl that effortlessly rose above the general hubbub. A few adults glanced across sympathetically and a girl of about twelve ambled over, put him on his feet and dusted him off with little slaps.

"He could have been really hurt" Donna said indignantly and Rory patted the hand she still had on his arm.

"No, he couldn't" he said comfortably. "We New Earthers are made of sterner stuff than you lot."

"Yeah, whatever, the walls are made of glass!" she argued and he just laughed.

"The glass is timelocked" he explained "it's tougher than steel. It wouldn't crack if you nuked it. And if he was really about to hurt himself the Device would have timelocked him, see? Some of these little devils jump off roofs for fun and the Device plays along, only timelocks them at the very last minute. A little bump on the head now and then reminds them they're not completely invulnerable."

"I remember now" the Doctor said thoughtfully "the sand here is almost pure silicate. And haven't you got tin mines down South?"

"Yes, tin is New London's main export. Before that glass was hand-blown rather than floated. Some of the older houses still have hand-blown windows, but since we learnt how to timelock the glass it's used for nearly everything. It's the cheapest building material there is."

"Well –" Donna was still shaken by what she'd thought was going to be a horrible accident. "The mothers here are certainly relaxed. Unless that little girl was his mother?"

"Good grief, no!" he shot her a horrified look "What kind of world do you come from, she's a child herself! Thing is, there's no contraception here. Or there wasn't until the Device came along. It can put the whole reproduction thing on hold for as long as people want. Until then large families were the norm and most people still like to have at least four kids. I'm from a family of nine, myself."

All gorgeous? She wondered involuntarily, then blushed as he glanced sidelong at her and winked. Oh God, had she said it out loud? As they walked, with the Doctor at his bounciest from side to side studying the goods on offer, she realized Rory was leading them purposefully out of the main roar of the place. They passed at least two places where other people were sitting drinking and eating and turned down a walkway between a fishmonger and a butcher where everything seemed to be behind glass.

"Here we go" he announced "over here, my particular favourite, highly recommended, coffee shop." He led the way into a cheerfully cluttered area with tables separated by hanging half-walls of brightly coloured glass cubes. Only when he raised the front flap on a cube invitingly did Donna realize the cubes weren't illustrations but individual shelves – each had a plate of food, or a glass, some fruit or – like the one Rory had opened – a cup.

"Strong? Medium? Milk? Frothy?" His hand hovered expectantly, then flickered between cubes to collect an espresso for the Doctor, a creamy coffee for Donna and a long froth-filled goblet for himself before ushering them to sit down.

"And apple pie" he added cheerfully, and plonked a slice on a plate down in front of each of them. To Donna's amazement her cup was steaming fragrantly and the first sip was ambrosial – hot, rich and full-bodied, a million miles from instant coffee. She held the cup under her nose between sips, inhaling the aroma greedily – the TARDIS was brilliant but it didn't provide anything as good as this - and looking round with interest. The place was half full, with people sitting reading or talking animatedly and she was reminded of the Doctor's comments on their ancestry. As a group they really were very attractive, mainly dark-haired but a scattering of blonds, or the silvery greys and whites of the many elderly patrons. Most people had the golden skin colour she'd admired in Susannah, and she was the only redhead in the place. Apart of course from Rory, and with his black lashes and brows he hardly counted. As a general rule they looked healthy, slim, had good teeth, and all seemed relaxed, it was like being at a good holiday resort. The only person working hard was a single waiter, weaving his way towards the cubes they'd emptied with refills on his tray. He slotted in the replacement espresso and the cube clouded momentarily as the steam touched the glass, then cleared as the flap dropped back into place.

"Okay, I give up. Nice trick." She savoured another sip. "How's it done?"

"Timelockers?" the Doctor guessed "Put your hot, or cold, product in there and it gets locked in time until you take it out? Donna, you've got to try this apple pie, it's the best one I've had in years." She opened her mouth to say she didn't really do apple pie and he nodded at her. "Seriously. Try it."

"We use timelockers for everything" Rory agreed "Here more than anywhere else, because we manufacture them here. Interesting thing, it started a whole sub-industry for chefs, they no longer need to work for one place. Now they set up in teams of three or four, you know, who like working together and between them cover a good range of specialties. A place like this will hire them for three or four days a month to cook and bake and brew perfect coffee, then they move to the next place on their list leaving this to be run by one or two people. The more plates you've got, the longer you can go before you need the chefs back. Or you hire more than one team and offer a more varied menu. There's three local Riddance teams and one that comes in from the north of the country when their usuals close for the winter. This place is the best because the owner's mum does his baking and her cakes would make you swear to change your ways and become a better man. When we leave I'll show you how the grocers store and display their stuff – I had a bumper crop of softberries two years back, with any luck there'll still be some for sale. As good as the day we harvested them."

"You're a farmer?" Donna drained her cup and put it down reluctantly, picking up her fork to dig into the apple pie. Which really was – she closed her eyes to enjoy it more. Tart apple puckered her mouth, but the sweetness of the light, crisp pastry was exactly the right contrast – she gave a little moan of greed and opened her eyes to find both men grinning at her. "What-ev-er!" she glared at them, then the humour of it hit her and she started to laugh. "Yes, you're both right, it's fantastic! All it needs is a clot of cream!"

"We don't have cows, and the milk we get, it's brilliant with coffee but not really rich enough for cream." Rory explained, which reminded Donna of her earlier question.

"I asked if you were a farmer!"

"I'm many things" he shrugged "Bit of a farmer. I sell ideas. A larval collector, which is in the fine old tradition of Riddance. Been doing that since I was knee-high to a clickit. Which brings us back to the clickits."

He stirred the last of his frothy drink with his straw, then noisily drained the glass with unabashed enjoyment. "Clickits are indigenous to the island, they're fun and useful and pretty much everyone ends up with at least one – newcomers didn't like them much, but their kids love them. The funny thing is, they start life as the ugliest and most destructive slug-like things you'll ever see. Disgusting larvae that eat anything they come across, starting with their own dead parents, the garbage we leave in a big circle round the town, plants, people, each other – and at the end of honey month I'll be hunting for nests of them to sell while they're still small and manageable."

"To eat?" Donna was fascinated and Rory laughed aloud

"God no, they taste vile. But because they're omnivorous they've perfect waste disposal units. The average household will buy five – a restaurant will take twenty or more – and they'll eat your sweepings, waste paper, leftovers and, as I said, each other. Even their castings are a benefit, fantastic manure. In a year's time you'll be left with one huge slug-like thing over a foot long. One day it'll curl up, its skin will turn to leather, and everyone has to start worrying about their own trash again. Anyway, at the end of honey month the cocoon splits to reveal the adult clickit, which instantly adopts itself an owner and becomes their constant companion. Eleven months later, on exactly the same day as the larvae cocoon themselves, the clickits leave, to mate. That's partly because the only thing they eat is larvae, so there's no more food. It's an amazing sight." He smiled reminiscently, then returned to his recital. "They spiral overhead for hours as the flock gets bigger and bigger, then they loop further out to start flying the town perimeter. Many die of exhaustion before the flock finally settles to mate, and the surviving males die immediately afterwards. The females only last long enough to lay their eggs – thousands and thousands of eggs. If you try to keep your clickit locked up to save its life it will die of a broken heart – they can only live a year. At the end of honey month the eggs hatch – just what the new clickits are looking for, yummy little baby larvae. The whole cycle is perfectly timed and very cannibalistic." He grinned at the expression on Donna's face.

She tossed her hair and said to the Doctor. "So, you saw a mating flight?"

"No, not at all, I'd love to. What I saw was a flying raptor being driven off." They were both obviously agog, so he went on, explaining for Donna's benefit "The mainland is still dominated by reptiles – the descendants of dinosaurs, if you like – including some pretty gigantic birds. Think pterodactyl. Meat-eaters, carnivores? Anyway, one of these came over New London when I was there and every clickit in town rose against it. It must have been like flying into a brick wall, thousands of shimmering wings to blind it, all of them clicking furiously. It nearly fell out of the sky but managed to recover itself and beat a hasty retreat. Incredible – the size of a two-seater plane and it didn't stand a chance. One of the most extraordinary things I ever saw."

"So" Donna broke the silence after the Doctor finished "They're called clickits because of the noise they make?"

"Never stop clicking" Rory smiled reminiscently "when the honey month starts and they leave, you keep thinking you've gone deaf, you're so used to the noise. They click soft and slow when they're happy, even when they're sleeping, more insistently when they want attention, and really loudly if they're alarmed. I've never seen them rise in defence but I've heard it described before – must be amazing."

"Yes, but" Donna interrupted this musing, suddenly realizing something "You're telling me we've been walking the streets – the very empty streets – and all the time we could have been snatched by something out of Jurassic Park?"

"Oh, they don't try often." Rory said reassuringly "We don't have any large mammals to attract them here – apart from humans, of course, and we're quite recent, haven't really made it onto their menu yet. Must be four years since the last attempt in a honey month, and the Roc – we call them Rocs – tried to snatch a unicorn. Well, you can imagine what happened to it. We're quite brave now in Riddance, although the rest of the country still stays pretty much under cover for the whole month. I've heard stray rumours they've been having attacks, but only rumours."

"The Roc was timelocked?" the Doctor leaned forward, eyes bright "What happened to it?"

"Well, I took it" Rory looked a little embarrassed. "Built an enclosure to contain it and spent five months switching it in and out of timelock trying to tame it. I had a tether which would stretch to 500 feet, and by trial and error I developed a kind of harness so I could strap myself to its back. Came the big day when I wanted to try actually flying with it, I pulled down the enclosure, got myself in place, and got the Device to restart it. The bloody Roc flew straight up with such force it broke the tether and that was us, hell for leather towards the mainland. Nothing for it but to unstrap myself and jump free, all the time knowing that I'd been teaching it there was food on the island and it could come back with friends. Luckily it didn't – but I suspect that's why I lay in the wastelands for a month before a search party came for me."

"A month! But how – oh, right, you were timelocked, like the street fighters." Donna shook her head at her own stupidity and Rory grinned at her.

"You've seen our street art, then? I call them Yin and Yang. Anyway, that was it, Mrs. B rang a peal over me, the councilors wanted to lock me up, but I still think if I could get a youngster, or even an egg, I could raise it to fly me around. Man, that would be brilliant! My grandfather was a pilot in the second world war. One minute he's bearing down on an enemy ship with his guns blazing and the next minute the ship's gone, he's over a lagoon and roaring towards an island that had never appeared on any chart – he took me up a couple of times before the last of the fuel was used up, and I've been hooked on flying ever since, trying to think up ways it could be done."

"So that's what an ideas man does" the Doctor leaned back in his seat and shook his head, smiling. "Thinks up impossible dreams and turns them into reality"

"Pretty much." Rory agreed "Although I mainly stick to the thinking up part. You know our history? There were several secret expeditions sent out to explore the Bermuda enigma over the past hundred or so years that found a little more than they bargained for - we've got some pretty brilliant scientists in the gene pool. Give them a well-presented idea and they take it all the way. I get a small percentage thereafter, it keeps the werewolf from the door."

"Like what?"

"Well – the timelockers. We knew time could be stopped on anything once the Portal opened, but I came up with doing it to order. The farmers – including me, that's how it started – can now harvest and store an entire crop at its best. We sell on to the Bazaars, who can display it indefinitely. And the shopper can store things at home until they're needed. Thanks to the Portal – and me – no more feast and famine, we eat like kings all year round."

"All this and modesty too." Donna marveled, but she was smiling. "You keep yourself busy."

"Just filling time, waiting for the right girl" he made teasing calf's eyes at her, then did a theatrical double-take. "Is that your pocket ringing, or are we making music?"

CHAPTER FIVE

"What? Oh!" flustered, she dug out her mobile and mouthed to the Doctor "Simon" before answering. "Simon? What's the news?"

"I came back to the Centre looking for you, I was so worried that you were missing, thank God you're all right. I've got some more information." Simon sounded tense. "Is the Doctor with you? Where are you now?"

"At the Bazaar, hang on for the Doctor" she handed the phone over and said to Rory in explanation "It's about Mrs. B".

The café was quite noisy and the Doctor rose to go to the quieter walkway to hear better, leaving them alone and Donna feeling suddenly shy. "You know about that, of course" she said for something to say and he nodded, frowning.

"The Device told me. I still can't believe they had the nerve to do it – and to isolate her on the handcart between her house and the station. If there HAD been a Roc attack, she'd have been its easiest target, and if she'd ended up in a Roc's nest – well, doesn't really matter whether you're timelocked or dinner by that point. You're not coming back. The Device was very nearly annoyed about it. "

"I thought she was the only person who could communicate with it?"

"Oh no, but she's still the best. There are a few who can pick up general stuff from it – usually quite dull and chilly people. I think it finds me interesting"

Who could blame it? But Donna just nodded and looked suitably interested and with a quick smile Rory went on.

"I get quite clear stuff from it. Like the Roc thing, it definitely disapproved? It believed I was distressing the beast, and although it doesn't theoretically have that kind of power I'm convinced it snapped the tether. I mean, that tether was made of werewolf fur, it could have moored a moon!"

"Werewolf fur?" Donna squeaked "I thought the Portal things couldn't be touched by humans?"

"They can't, not living. But werewolves have long straggly hair and creep through bushes a lot, they leave clumps of fur everywhere and enough of their protection stays on it that it's virtually indestructible. We weave it into ropes that never break. We collect unicorn tail hair as well, for the timelockers, but the best is a phoenix feather – it lights up when there's danger nearby!"

'You're pulling my leg" Donna said crossly and he laughed out loud, throwing his head back.

"Well, yes – after all the only danger to a phoenix is a zichty, and they very rarely come near humans. But I'm sure if they did the feather would light up!" He sobered instantly as the Doctor came back rubbing his hands thoughtfully.

"Rory my old son, Simon says you might be prepared to take us to New Amsterdam?"

"I might." Rory agreed "What's the story?"

"Seems Mrs. B is being arraigned there tomorrow morning and I think she needs a lawyer. Would that make me a peacekeeper or a do-gooder? Fortunately I just happen to have my credentials with me –" and with a flourish he presented Rory with his psychic paper.

"It's blank?" Rory looked puzzled and the Doctor raised one eyebrow. Stopping the waiter, who was hurrying past with more refills, he said politely

"Could you just tell me what that says?"

"John Smith, Intergalactic legal counsel" the waiter read obediently, then looked impressed. "Wow!"

"Oh right, some kind of psychic paper. You should be ashamed of yourself, trying to psychic a psychic." Rory held his hand out for the paper again and shook his head. "Still blank. Don't bother with that. You could find some of the court officials are psychic too, and anyway you're revered as the Doctor, you can just be yourself. So Mrs. B needs a legal team and as we don't have one in Riddance, you're nominating yourself? The drive'll take about an hour, what time do we need to be there?"

"Eleven o'clock tomorrow morning. Thanks very much. Now, if we're meeting Luke at ten tonight means we've got a couple of hours still to fill? Any ideas?"

"Get Donna something to wear over that outfit" Rory said decisively "You're okay" to the Doctor, and indeed Rory was wearing something not unlike the Doctor's coat "but she needs something that'll blend in more – and" as she opened her mouth indignantly "something warmer to wear tonight."

She subsided – it was true her bright dress had been drawing glances, the women she'd seen so far wore conventional clothing but in soft muted shades. Rory took them to the Eastern bazaar (textiles, linens, bedding and clothing) where she 'bought', using the card from Simon, two linen blouses, one in soft green and one embroidered in cream and brown on a mellow yellow, with a flatteringly-cut brown woolen skirt. She refused to replace her shoes with the moccasin-like options, or boots, especially when she realized what covetous glances hers were drawing, but fell for an absolutely simple, slightly furry brown coat with a flatteringly-draped hood which Rory lifted down and handed to her after a quick glance and nod at the stall-holder. Only one thing worried her – "It isn't werewolf, is it?"

"No, we have a native animal not unlike a sheep" Rory assured her "very soft, very silky wool"

"Very soft" she agreed happily, rubbing the fabric between her fingers. There was a problem – her card was rejected for the coat.

"Luxury items need a credit balance" Rory explained "the cards Simon gave you cover food and basic supplies. Don't worry, I'll pay for it, you look a regular duchess in it." He saw her expression and looked amused. "I'm stonking rich – but you can pay me back with what you'll earn for legal fees, if you prefer." Donna looked at the Doctor, who nodded encouragingly

"Rory's right, you look magnificent – you have to have it. Come on, I want to do some more shopping, I've still got my card even though you've spent your lot".

The south Bazaar had furnishings and domestic equipment, which kept the Doctor fascinated long after Donna had got bored. Rory took pity on her and steered them away from the domestic items to the back of the bazaar where the communally-owned farm equipment was stored near huge rear doors. The Doctor was enraptured by a kind of tractor adapted from what had originally been a ship's turbine, used for ploughing, harrowing and rotivating by the farmers of the town and kept centrally at the bazaar when not needed.

"There are about fifteen in the country – we need them to break heavy ground" Rory explained "the power that used to go into turning the propeller of a ship now trundles it over the fields and we attach whatever we need." He frowned at it. "It's not very sophisticated, we do everything else – weeding, watering, harvesting – by hand, but it's stronger than a hundred men pulling together. Come on, I want to take you back to the western bazaar, Donna said you need to stock up on food?"

The Doctor gave him a quizzical look but sighed and followed them back to the first building. They didn't go into the fourth building at all. Rory explained it was usually the school but because the children had to stay under cover for the month it was now a play centre. He called it Bedlam, and even walking past it they could hear a kind of sustained roar. The only other place the children could safely go, he told them, was the caves in the hills just north of the town, which could be reached by tunnel from the school.

"Riddance started in the caves, they're huge – even now the whole town could fit in there. Bit dark, and smelly, and lots of water running through them so they're pretty damp, but well worth a visit. If you stay on a while?"

Donna's card was still working for food when they stopped at the butcher's - the cards recognized categories and assigned credits accordingly, to stop anyone spending their whole budget on drink or, Rory teased, expensive coats. On his recommendation she bought some of the dried sausage which the shopkeeper assured her was a local delicacy and which turned out to be delicious. There was pork and chicken on sale – early ships caught by the shaft had carried both poultry and pigs on long voyages – but some of their descendants had interbred, whether by design or by accident, with local fauna so there was a poultry option not unlike turkey, and a kind of boar with a strong gamey smell. Indigenous to the island was their version of mutton and, to the Doctor's delight, giant drumsticks from a flourishing population of dodos. The dried sausage combined small quantities of boar with the mutton, herbs and spices and Donna kept reopening the packet for another nibble.

"Our mouflon – our equivalent of what you would call sheep – are very obliging." Rory stole a bit of her sausage. "They're our source of milk and wool, and the females live for years, providing two to three lambs in every single litter, but the males don't survive their first breeding year. We don't ever need to slaughter them – if you want mutton on the menu, just offer a male a few choice females." He sighed and looked soulful. "It's a hard country for males, ecstasy and death entwined."

She ignored his melting glance and swirled round in her coat again "Great place for feminists!"

"And pumpkins!" the Doctor, who'd got a bit bored once the chance to compare pieces of equipment had gone, had found himself a new distraction. The vegetable he waved at her, taken from a timelocker full of them, was about the size of his fist and had eight protruding legs. "Donna, look at this, it's called a spider pumpkin?"

"Gross, why does it have legs, please don't tell me the vegetables here walk around?"

"Only once a year." Rory assured her, and she looked suspiciously from him to the stall-holder, who nodded solemnly. "You know Halloween, right? You have it too? Well, since the Portal opened, it's very bizarre but every Halloween the spider pumpkins are taken over by zichties, invisible goblin-like things, and they run all over the place. Only at Halloween, and the next day they're back to being boring vegetables."

"Oh right, and I suppose these dried sausages wriggle off into the bushes too?"

Rory looked baffled. "No, just the spider pumpkins. They're not really pumpkins, you know. They're edible, and they grow on a vine, but they use the vines to find their own food, so we give them bowls of water with a kind of growth hormone to make them crop heavily. Then a spider – gee, years ago – drowned in the water one year, and all the pumpkins came out with legs that year. We've been experimenting with shapes ever since, they just naturally mimic the shape of things in their water – Frank, you got any other shapes in stock?"

"Nope." Frank smiled at Donna understandingly. "You think it's nuts, we get that reaction from visitors from the other towns all the time. It's really true, we get them to grow that way. The other really popular shape is frog pumpkins, but I'm all sold out of those. Tilly still had some, two stalls down?"

Donna and the Doctor silently studied the frog pumpkins, but she shook her head violently when he offered to buy some. "What, eat something that's been basted in dead frog and will go hopping all over the Tardis at Halloween, are you crazy?"

Tilly looked puzzled, but Rory said with great patience that it was only ever the spider pumpkins that the zichties chose. Donna had seen too many strange things on her travels to dismiss the story as a complete wind-up, but she couldn't help but notice that Tilly suddenly found she needed to scrabble around for something that had fallen behind her counter ….

The afternoon was wearing into evening when they finally finished exploring the Bazaar and emerged, laden with packages tied in string. The square was heavily barred by lengthening shadows under a spectacular sunset.

"This is why we call this the honey month" Rory, squinting towards the sinking sun, was a great guide, answering questions they hadn't even thought to ask. "The weather is perfect – not too hot, not too cold, no rain all month, the crops are past needing weeding but not ready for harvest, all the livestock have given birth and been re-mated. The only chore we really have is to shift our rubbish to the edges of town and the only dangerous creatures on the island – the larvae – are safely cocooned. This is when couples get married, children are on their annual holiday, most businesses are turned over to the older folk and people travel or relax –"

"Indoors, away from Rocs" Donna said darkly, glaring at the sunset as though searching for a flock of monsters to come winging out of it.

"Four years, duchess, remember? Anyway, they NEVER hunt after sunset" Rory waved away her demur airily. "The evening is safe and the twilight lasts for hours, this is when every town comes to life".

There was certainly much more bustling around them in the square, with tables and chairs being claimed as fast as they were carried out and, on the far side of the fountain, the inimitable sounds of a brass band warming up. Rory caught her hand and squeezed it, smiling into her eyes.

"There'll be dancing, singing, wine, lots of ale – do you really have to go off to the boring old unicorns?"

"We said we would " the Doctor was amused "and this'll all be here tomorrow, right?"

"So you're not coming to the hide with us, then?" Donna tried not to sound disappointed – not entirely successfully, to judge by the wicked grin the Doctor flashed her – and Rory squeezed her hand again.

"I'm expected here tonight" he tried to sound apologetic "but I could – hey, where are you guys staying overnight? If you want to stay with me I'll collect you later?"

"No need, the TARDIS is right next to the hide" the Doctor said cheerfully and gave Rory directions for collecting them the following morning. Donna watched him stride away, coat flaring, with a feeling of desolation that turned to indignation as two particularly attractive young women ran up to throw their arms round him and he roared with laughter and swung both off their feet.

"Why, he's just a playboy!" she said crossly to the Doctor, who nodded.

"Pretty much the hottest game in town, I'd say." He agreed "You didn't notice in the bazaars, then, how every woman there was watching him? And HATING you."

"That helps!" She laughed and for once took his arm as they left. She glanced back once, as they went through the archway, and saw Rory, still hung about with pretty women, had turned his head to watch them go, which helped her ruffled feelings just a little bit more.

CHAPTER SIX

'You know, I can't believe those boys let us walk here knowing the danger" she suddenly remembered "that's probably why they sleep there before their duty, so they aren't walking round in broad daylight. But they let US do it!"

The Doctor just laughed and shook his head at her. He was holding her hand very firmly, as though, she thought slightly indignantly, she were a two year old, and glancing from side to side as they walked quickly down the little track which was fast shrinking into barely a path. The sky was still pink in the west, but was deepening to a star-pricked purple above them, and although the light was good the shadows under the gorse had real texture. Then she belatedly remembered what the lads had said – the werewolves came across in the dark – and picked up her own pace. He shot her a quick reassuring grin but didn't slacken pace as they pounded on towards the hide and the TARDIS, and she was gasping for breath by the time they rounded a clump of gorse and saw its familiar stoicism, as ever looking hopelessly inappropriate, ahead of them.

"Over here" came a shout to guide them to the hide and Luke leaned out to beckon them in.

"Oh, NOW you're worried" Donna dumped her packages and sank into a chair as soon as they got inside, breathing hard. "Nothing about Rocs this morning, eh?"

Luke grinned at her. "Roc attacks are so rare you were statistically more likely to get lost and end up in the lagoon" he explained "to tell you would have just made you nervous. Most people here believe even saying the word Roc attracts them, like they're perched on the mainland just waiting for someone to say their name so they can come winging across, how stupid is that? But the first werewolves have already arrived – see?" He pointed to the shadows under a particularly large clump of gorse "just keep looking there – one of them will twitch an ear or something and then you'll suddenly be able to see it clearly. If you'd run into them, you'd have been playing statues out there all night, and might have scared off the 'corns."

"Oh Luke, that's rude!" his colleague tonight introduced herself as Jen. "I love your coat." She said to Donna "It's a Rory original, isn't it?"

"What, does he design clothes too?" Donna groaned. "He certainly suggested I try it on but he was uncharacteristically modest if it's one of his"

Jen laughed "My mum says Rory's every woman's dream – or nightmare! What I like is he makes you feel like the most interesting person in the world when you're talking to him – but then he goes off and does exactly the same to someone else! If any girl does start to get clingy he just vanishes for a couple of days. She says his father was exactly the same before he got married, and his grandfather before him, and they probably really do find you irresistible – at the time. It works on everyone, you should see his pickers giggling and blushing and their average age is eighty."

"You're forgetting all the teenage girls giggling and blushing as well" Luke said mildly. "The Banks farm has first pick of helpers every harvest. The fact that he takes on the older and younger helpers, that the other farmers don't really want, just makes him more popular. He's got a surviving older brother who's the complete opposite, as serious and conventional as a – well, as a town councilor. He's my teacher for languages, and we all tease him about his girlfriend in New Lisbon, he's away on the first train he can catch every weekend and holiday if he's not needed on the land."

He explained to Donna and the Doctor "come harvest, or spring planting, everyone helps. Schools close, the old folks either work on the land or take over in the businesses to free the work force, little kids are in charge of checking the perimeter for larvae that manage to get past the clickits. Everyone does their bit. My Dad says we probably don't all need to but it gets the job done faster and makes everyone feel part of the harvest. Hey, did you see that?"

Donna had been staring idly at the deep shadows since he first pointed to them, and nearly jumped out of her skin as one shadow shook itself and was instantly visible as a shape – more ape than wolf, with a curved back and long arms. The movement rippled through the shadows and she saw four, maybe five matching shapes.

"Nasty" the Doctor commented behind her "that's quite a group, have they picked a target yet?"

"Two." Luke said authoritatively. "See that older female, keeps drifting slightly away from the herd? The slightly dingy-looking one? The stallion's pulled her back twice, but they're creeping towards her. Or that colt, the dark grey one, he's mucking about ignoring his mum. I'm guessing they're watching him too."

Donna closed her eyes and said childishly "I don't want to see a kill". I want, she thought mutinously, to be dancing with Rory while all the local girls hate my guts.

"I doubt we will" Jen said reassuringly "The yearlings have already slipped away and they're the usual target, we've got visitors out at the other hides watching them. The main herd's usually safe and it's absolutely brilliant to watch them defending themselves, don't think of them as victims waiting to be killed, they're brilliant fighters. Donna, you might like this, from this window you can just see the foals settling down to sleep, they're exactly like naughty little children."

"You might need the night glasses to see them" Luke pointed to some ungainly binoculars on the table "Pretty soon you'll only be able to see the adults – the ones in their breeding prime glow in the dark, so the werewolves avoid them, even gentle light hurts their eyes. As the 'corns get older the glow fades, so they're more vulnerable. It's evolution reacting to necessity, do you see? Actually most of our 'corns are older, we think it must be pretty scary on their side if they find it safer here."

Donna was enjoying the play of the foals being settled for the night, with two adults patiently herding them and the foals jumping up playfully the minute the adult stepped away. They settled like puppies, tumbled in a heap and using each other as pillows, and so effective was their dark colouring that once they'd closed their shining eyes if she looked away she couldn't find them again. The night glasses showed them as nine green mounds with, above them, the green outline of the patient phoenix and to one side the two adults, one grazing, one looking round uneasily. "So, do they get a break when the werewolves turn into humans?" she asked Jen who giggled and shook her head.

"That was just myth because of their odd appearance." She said decisively "We're pretty sure of that, because they hunt every night, moon or no moon. Apparently they do look as if they're mid-change, but that's their permanent shape."

"Apparently?" Donna looked at her with brows raised and Jen said simply "I've never seen a wolf. Or even a dog. I've heard about them, older people talk about them all the time as if they're the best things old Earth had to offer, but I think they must be horrible if they look like those things."

"They look like small unicorns, dogs do." Donna thought about it. "But with solid tails, which they wag a lot. And they smile by lolling their tongues out their mouths – yeah, all right, even I can hear that sounds gross. They're lots of fun, and protective, and love to be with you."

"Like a clickit?" Jen was wide-eyed and Donna gave up.

"Looks a bit like a small unicorn and acts like a clickit but lives much longer." She agreed and Jen said politely that dogs sounded very nice.

The Doctor was turning his night glasses over in his hands, looking thoughtful. "Did you have these before?" he asked Luke "Or only since the Portal opened?"

"Well, we didn't need them before" Luke said reasonably "Actually, Rory, the guy you were talking about before? He's our local brainbox, don't know if you realized that, he came up with the idea, before then we could watch a bit by moonlight, and of course see the phoenix burning and the adults glowing but it was a bit frustrating. He took the idea to New Geneva and they created the goggles. This is one of his, too" he showed them how he was boiling the water for coffee, using a block of what looked like wood with a cut-out into which exactly fitted the glass water flask, bubbling boisterously. He lifted the flask clear and started to fill the mugs "This is a hot box – when you put pressure on the bottom of the cut out bit, like a mug, or the jug when you need a lot of water, it heats up."

"Battery-powered?" Donna asked with interest – it would make a good present for her granddad on the nights when he was sitting out in the allotment with his telescope.

Luke shook his head "The Device stores excess energy in little cubes and doesn't mind us using it. What does battery mean?"

"A way of storing electricity for remote applications." The Doctor had taken out his sonic screwdriver and was running it over the hot box appreciatively. "This is very clever. Very clever!"

"Oh well, that's Rory for you" Luke said tolerantly "Mad as a mouflon, and he may turn every woman in Riddance into an idiot but he has his uses."

"Harsh!" Jen, laughing, took her coffee, and said to the Doctor "It wouldn't be feasible to run power cables out to the hide, but because the Portal is the Device's pet projects we're able to requisition everything we need – the night glasses are on Device power too. At home we're on wave power, of course, if we're on the seaward side, or wind power on the hill side of town."

"Of course" the Doctor echoed appreciatively "Donna's from the other Earth, you know. They're only just starting into energy from wind and waves." The teens looked gratified, and Jen offered

"Rory's dad came up with wave power. Ideas run in the family." The Doctor looked interested but Luke had turned to Donna and was asking her about the 'other' Earth.

"Quite like this." She was answering. "But without clickits? And dodos have been extinct for centuries, but at times I could have believed I was back home when we went into town. I come from –" she hesitated "old? London. Well, London."

"Nearly all our towns are called New." Luke was fascinated. "New London, New Amsterdam, New Lisbon, they were all started by the sailors. New Geneva is like a university town, because a lot of the scientists were Swiss. My dad says his dad told him that new people went to a town where their language was spoken, but we all speak pretty much the same language now. I've been to New Lisbon, they've got a different accent and some words are different, but you can pretty much understand everything. My dad's a trader so he travels the whole country."

"How does he do that?" Donna couldn't resist asking. "We've seen no cars? When they took Mrs. B away it was in a hand cart?"

"We've got runabouts, just for use in town, you probably didn't see any because it's honey month and no-one was out much, but the other visitors tonight – they got here just after sundown, they've gone to the farthest hide – they came by runabout, I'll go back with them when my shift ends. To get from one town to another we go by train – do you have trains? Steam-powered engines pulling carriages?" He seemed almost disappointed when she nodded. "Well, New Amsterdam, that was the first settlement, that has canals but the early settlers soon realized it was easier to lay tracks than dig a canal. New Lisbon was built next, and has just one canal. Now the track runs round the whole country and the train does two full circuits every day. My dad spends half his life either on the train or waiting for it to come round again."

"Donna." The Doctor interrupted, nodding to the window "Put on your goggles, I think we're about to see something."

Twilight was thickening into darkness by now and she could see the unicorns – which really were glowing faintly – shifting restlessly, the stallion circling the herd and gently pushing the dimmer adults towards its centre. Two others were also working the perimeter, their yarping barks insistent.

"That's the alpha female, and one of the young males, helping him." Jen had put on her own glasses. "You can tell the males by their heavier necks? And usually longer horns than the females, but that's quite a young male. The werewolves often try once before total dark, when the glow is to some degree absorbed by the twilight. There, look, do you see the pack?"

Donna did – the hideous creatures, stalking on their hind legs, long arms swinging free, had slunk out into the open and were circling the herd. A young male unicorn half-reared and charged, catching a werewolf on his horn and spinning him contemptuously into the dark while the others scattered, snarling and circling back as if to enclose him.

"Oh!" she breathed "look out!" But the stallion was there, squealing and flashing his horn with the dexterity of a fencer. The pack broke and bounded away on all fours, yelping defiance.

"Oh, they're horrible!" Donna was flushed as the stallion tapped his horn against the young male's. "Do they try that all night?"

"No, that wasn't usual – damn, it was just a feint" Luke called, rushing to the other window. "Look!" The two adults who'd been watching the foals were almost dancing as they fidgeted, trying to look in every direction at once. Even as the watchers crowded to the window there was a snarling rush, the two adults almost lost from sight under the onslaught and the sleepy foals squealing with fright as the fight bore down on them. Light suddenly poured onto the fight as though a switch had been pressed, putting the unicorns and werewolves in stark silhouette as the phoenix's glow became a searing light. Donna tore off the goggles but that was worse, like looking straight into an arc lamp, completely blinding her.

"Ah, the sods" Luke said violently "The werewolves that did it will be blinded, so the pack only try it every few months, but it always works."

"What works, what do you mean?" the phoenix light was fading and she fumbled to put on her glasses again.

"They got a foal" Jen had a catch in her voice "like Luke said, they do it every now and then, before the foals are asleep, and at least one panics and bolts off. I doubt there'll be anything more tonight unless another pack comes through."

Donna was frozen with horror "And you – you have to watch this every night?"

"We don't have to, we volunteer" Luke looked surprised "People like to see the animals and they've always got questions, so we make sure there's always at least one person here who knows the answers. Half the kids in town are involved. We take turns, either out here or the younger kids patrol the town in groups with torches, in case the werewolves go into town and bother anyone walking home late. We escort anyone walking at night."

He saw her incomprehension and tried to explain. "It's recognized do-gooder experience, which helps later when you're looking for work, but also it's fun, and sociable, and a bit scary because you have to be alert, the werewolves are really good stalkers. Of course they can't hurt you but if they do charge you're timelocked so we also have the power to restart people who've been caught, that's something that normally only community officials have. So, yeah, sometimes there's a kill and sometimes it's a foal." He looked at Jen, saw she was silently crying, and put his arm round her comfortingly, looking back at Donna. "That's life."

Donna's own eyes prickled and to hide it she donned her night glasses again and looked out the foal window. "Oh, one of the adults was hurt!" She exclaimed as two other adults nosed at the injured one, which had four deep bleeding furrows gouged in its rump. There was a werewolf, too, dragging itself away on its grotesque elbows, legs trailing uselessly.

"Kicked." Luke had bent to follow her line of sight but was looking at the werewolf, and there was satisfaction in his voice. "And with any luck got its stonking back broken. There's nothing we can do for the 'corn, but they heal really well and now it can be named - with scars, see, it's easy to recognize them. There -" pointing "that's Dexi-corn, with the scars on his flank? And Sarah-corn has a long scar down her face from a werewolf she impaled. You spotted this one, so we can call her Donna-corn if you like? She'll go back through the Portal tonight and we won't see her for a week or two, but we'll recognize her when she reappears."

He turned from the window and leaned against the wall, looking tired, and Donna remembered they'd stopped him getting his usual sleep in the morning. "That's probably going to be it for the night, the foals will be back to sleep and the 'corns will settle. You might see a bit of, we call it flirting? The unicorns are very tactile, they touch each other all the time. If a pair are getting ready to mate they're all over each other. But otherwise that's it – the dead will be taken through the Portal, the injured will make their own way through, I've seen them go through practically side by side just ignoring each other, like they've called some kind of a truce. Weird."

"So, you've gone pretty close, have you ever tried to go through the Portal?" the Doctor asked curiously and the teens exchanged glances. "You have" he guessed and Luke sat down abruptly.

"There was a guy, Ian, on our team, he was obsessed with the idea. He was convinced it would be safe, like a mirror image, anything that came near us would be timelocked, but he couldn't talk anyone else into backing him up. Not even Harry, and Harry and Ian have been friends all their lives. The three of us were pretty much the first kids to volunteer, hip-high to a unicorn, barely thirteen years old but we argued that we could do what at that time the adults were doing, the night escorts. Finally got allowed to join the escorts, and the last few years they've been pretty much run by the teens. You can't come out to the hides as a volunteer before you turn seventeen. There was a time when helping with the unicorns was a punishment, a kind of community service, but soon every kid in town was trying to break the law just to get here. Ian was here the day he turned seventeen, his mother knows what he's like, just gave him his birthday cake to bring with him. He spent every minute he could out here, and about six months ago he started on about going through the Portal. That time Harry and I wouldn't back him up. There was always the chance we'd lose the protection altogether? Or that it would work as it does here, leaving a team stranded and timelocked on the other side? Anyway, he vanished a couple months ago."

He looked up at the Doctor miserably "His mother went nova, especially when Mrs. B wouldn't authorize a rescue attempt. He was a top guy, too, lots of fun, do anything for a dare. We really miss him."

Jen made a strangled sound and Donna gave her a quick hug, looking at the Doctor over Jen's shoulder. "Could we?" she mouthed and he shook his head. "Well" she said aloud "I've just about had –"

The hide door burst open, interrupting her, and the room suddenly filled with people, a couple more teens and an older couple, presumably, the visitors, looking stressed.

"They've taken a yearling!" One of the kids exclaimed 'You can't believe what a fight it was, three werewolves killed and another yearling badly hurt. We followed them to the Portal, nearly got caught by the rest of the pack heading home, looks like they were calling it a night, had they already killed?"

"Took a foal." Luke looked disgusted. "Feast night for them, three of their own and two 'corns. We'd better check that one with the broken back got picked up by the others, Rob, or that'll be fouling the place up by morning." He and the lad who'd come in left with bright flares, bobbing off into the darkness, while Jen did distracted introductions all round and put the flask back on to boil.

"I don't understand, do they eat their own?" Donna was revolted but Jen answered over her shoulder.

"Good thing too" she said sturdily. "The 'corns kill or maim one most nights, we don't want their stinking corpses left here. The guys can't touch that injured one but it'll crawl faster to get away from their lights and they can sort of herd it. We're not far from the Portal."

"What absolutely foul things they are" one of the visitors – Marie? Donna couldn't remember – said wearily. "And it was such a nice night until then, watching the yearlings romancing each other. Now one is dead, it was just horrible. Tommy, I want to go home."

"We're just waiting for Luke to get back, we're taking him home, remember?" Tommy patted her shoulder. "Have your coffee, I want to talk to the Doctor." He stuck his hand out and shook the Doctor's enthusiastically. "I was about eight when you were here last, my best friend's family decided to go back to Earth, I missed him like hell. Often wonder how much he thinks of the fun we used to have. How did they all get on, do you know?"

"Ah." the Doctor shook his head. "I'm afraid he won't remember you, Tommy. Except in his dreams, nothing we can do about dreams. Thing was, people going back couldn't walk back into their own lives and start talking about alien abduction, I had to make that clear at the time. And you can't pitch up with a suntan after a year, or twenty years, and make up a story. So the offer we made was that we'd take people back to Earth, and we'd help them start up again, but we'd have to adjust their memories. Result was, there were – I think it was twenty families in all that went back? They all had fake memories of being shipwrecked off Bermuda and finally getting found and now they were back, but we had to modify the memories. Couldn't have someone getting sick of the English weather and deciding to go back and find what they thought was an island on Earth. They had to remember it as fairly harrowing. They're not even in touch with each other. So he won't remember having friends. But as to how they're doing, pretty trouble-free, last I heard. I handed the whole bunch over to Torchwood, which is an agency that usually deals with aliens on Earth, good for them to have it the other way round."

"You can do that, get into people's memory?" Donna was constantly surprised by the Doctor's matter-of-fact comments.

"The TARDIS can." He qualified. "Sometimes you have to."

"And they never get it back?" Tommy looked as taken aback as she felt. "That's just wrong – I'd hate to just forget something, your memories make you the person you are."

"The TARDIS transfers the relevant bits from your conscious to your subconscious. You don't lose the lessons learnt, you just don't remember learning them. That's why I said your friend may still dream of life here – and if you showed him a picture of a clickit he would know what it was, but he wouldn't remember owning one. There's no stress, you know, people aren't fretted by their missing memories, probably because subconsciously they know they still have them. It just makes it easier for them to live a completely different life without regrets. I'll say this, I think your family made the right decision."

"Yeah, I do too. My mother was an island girl born and bred, it wasn't an issue as far as she was concerned. So, Johnny will be growing up on another world never remembering he spent two years of his life here." He looked a bit wistful and his wife gave him a slightly mocking look.

"In New Amsterdam, we are a bit insular" she remarked, her diction very precise and the faintest of Dutch accents. "I could not have lost a friend that way because we did not get friendly with people until they had been here at least ten years and had proved to be nice people. People who were not nice were encouraged to move elsewhere, like to Riddance." A malicious smile touched her lips and Jen stiffened and flushed. Donna's jaw had dropped at the sheer rudeness of the comment, and she ignored the Doctor's would-be restraining touch on her arm.

"Just as well you didn't choose to go back" she snapped at once "You'd have gone down like a lead balloon in Holland. The Netherlanders are the nicest, friendliest people – but that's probably what you were doing off Bermuda. Trying to find somewhere more private where you could consider yourselves a bit more special?"

"Exactly." Marie smiled at her with genuine amusement. "You say what you think, that is refreshing. If you stay for a while I hope you will come and visit me one day, and tell me about Amsterdam as you know it?"

"That's brave of you" the Doctor said admiringly. "Donna's a breeze on a calm day, but she's been known to blow up a bit of a hurricane!"

"Oi!"

"Now, Donna, I'm just using local metaphors. I think you and Marie would be very well matched, but it's nearly midnight, we've got a big day tomorrow."

"You" Donna said angrily to Marie, completely ignoring the Doctor "were bloody rude about Riddance. We've met really nice people here. I don't think there's any justification for comments like that."

"But it isn't – really – for you to take up sticks, no, I think I mean cudgels, on their behalf? But your point is made." She glanced round at the staring Jen and the other teenager who were still in the hide. "I make you my apology. Your town has a champion in Donna, and she has made me realize I was rude, I did not mean to be."

"Yeah, well." The boy whose name Donna couldn't remember muttered. Jen was a little more direct.

"You were rude, but we accept the apology. It would be nice if people could stop thinking about Riddance as if it was still, well, a sort of problem area. Maybe a hundred years ago it was where misfits came from other towns but that's not true now, we've got really good people, and the Device, and we're doing really well, we're pretty sick of people bullying us and mocking us and marching in and taking Mrs. B away!"

"My dear." Marie stood up gracefully and put her arms round Jen, who looked both mutinous and as if she was about to burst into tears. "You are quite right, and I am truly sorry. It seems as if Donna's knack of speaking the truth is infectious. I hope everything is sorted out very soon with your Mrs. B."

"Well, that's all sorted." Tommy said hastily "And Marie's comments were aimed at me, you know, she – teases – me about coming from here originally. Always has done. And I make rude comments about New Amsterdam and having to live there for her sake, it's a kind of joke between us, no offence meant. I have to say, Doctor, you don't look at all like your pictures."

The Doctor had to grin at this determined attempt to change the subject. "Well, the TARDIS never changes, so it convinces people for me" he agreed "but, you know, people usually accept me in the end. I'd be a fairly doddery sight if I didn't regenerate fairly regularly, and it would be pretty boring for me if I looked the same every time I did. But listen, to change the subject, you said you weren't staying here at the hide, you're going home? In the dark? What if there are still werewolves this side?"

"The runabouts have so many lights it's like broad daylight." Tommy reassured him "plus the lad coming in for tomorrow's duty, it's nearly midnight, his dad'll be bringing him and we'll go back in convoy. And we're not going back to New Amsterdam, just into town, we're staying with my family."

"A treat for them." Donna still hadn't quite forgiven Marie, but she did say it very quietly. If Marie heard her she gave no sign of it!

There were three runabouts in all, and while their combined light wasn't daylight, it certainly was bright enough to make Donna narrow her eyes against the glare. They looked something like the very first cars ever built, with a steering lever rather than a steering wheel, a bench seat under a little canopy, and a generous trunk, but they buzzed off down the track efficiently enough, passengers waving goodbye. Donna and Jen had hugged goodbye and as she walked with the Doctor the short distance to the TARDIS she looked at the glowing herd, now peacefully grazing as though nothing had happened.

"They just don't care." She looked at the stallion who was standing flank to flank with one of the mares, rubbing his horn against hers.

"Circle of life." The Doctor opened the door to the TARDIS "If they grieved for every loss, they couldn't function."

"SHE'S upset." Donna pointed at one unicorn who stood with her head drooping, not grazing. "It must have been her foal."

"You humans." The Doctor said forcefully, hustling her through the door and closing it behind them. "You ascribe your own feelings and emotions to everything. She may be the foal's mother, or the yearling's mother. She may be in love with the stallion, and heartsick because he's flirting with another mare. She may have hurt herself in one of the charges, or she may just have eaten a slug on her bit of gorse and is feeling peaky. Life goes on until sooner or later, it ends. Animals know that, and live every moment as it comes. Humans try to ignore it, and complicate things, so tell me, who has the better idea?"

His face, as always when death was discussed, was shadowed so instead of turning it into a lively quarrel Donna asked instead "Why did you shake your head at me about going after Ian?"

"Ah." The Doctor checked everything looked normal on the TARDIS controls, then leaned against a bulkhead to answer her. "If Mrs. B said no, that's because the Device said no. And that's a very clever Device. I've got one idea and what we CAN do, tomorrow, is get Rory to ask the Device if it is feasible, but no point in raising false hopes. Now, get some beauty sleep – your new beau arrives in a few hours."

"Yeah, I hope not in one of those runabout things, we could take all day getting there" said Donna, diverted "Think it'll be a horse and cart?"

CHAPTER SEVEN

Rory's transport, when he arrived a few minutes earlier than expected, was spectacular, heralded by a gathering roar that penetrated even into the TARDIS, and resembling nothing so much as a giant ladybird on caterpillar tracks. He thoroughly enjoyed their amazement while even the unicorns, which had scattered in fright, drew skittishly closer to look. It was not unlike one of the bigger MoD tanks, because of the caterpillar treads, but only if a tank were made of cheerful red fiberglass, with a bubble top instead of a turret. The ladybird impression was all the stronger because of the shadowed cutouts on its flanks where spots would have been, which Rory used to swing himself down to ground level before the bubble dome had finished its retreat into the chassis, exposing a kind of central console surrounded by five seats similar to those in the hide.

"Coffee!" he roared genially towards the hide "I came specially early for coffee, so you lot in there better have water boiling for me! Good morning, duchess, no need to ask how you slept, you look radiant. God, that hair of yours is glorious! I hardly slept a wink all night thinking of you, look at these bags under my eyes. Morning, doc!"

"You do look dissipated." Donna agreed critically but despite her best intentions she couldn't stop her lips twitching and he enfolded her in a gigantic gentle hug.

"That's better, you're heaven when you're smiling. Doc, have we got time to see your ship?"

"What a pity, no, only from the outside." The Doctor was very selective who he let on to the TARDIS and didn't look at all repentant. "Not its best angle".

Rory gaped up at the faded blue sides of the Police box. "Seriously? You travel in that? You slept last night in that? You should have stayed with me. My place is a palace by comparison." He accepted his coffee, brought by a shy girl from the hide who gazed adoringly at him, with barely a quick flash of his usual grin.

"It's bigger on the inside" the Doctor said mildly. "I'm more interested in your - what do you call that thing, anyway?"

"My Bug?" Rory turned away from the TARDIS with one last disbelieving glance. "She's a beauty, isn't she? There are no roads between towns so she had to be all-terrain. And I wanted something I could sleep in, if I went off for several days, so she" he patted a glossy red flank with pride "lifts up on stilts, the body part that is, I've got panels stored in lockers in the treads, in ten minutes I've a roof over my head, paneled walls and the passenger chairs fold flat into bunks. Pretty good, huh? Anything like this on Earth?"

"Oh, no" the Doctor said candidly "She wouldn't fit on most roads, she'd need two motorway lanes to herself, I would think. And they wouldn't appreciate her undoubted charm. How do we get on board?"

Rory handed his drained cup back to his doting admirer with another flashing grin, and swarmed up the side using the cutouts as steps. Following his example – and clinging tightly to his strong steadying right hand – Donna followed suit and the Doctor scrambled up as if he'd done it for years, with a wave to the teenagers who backed up nervously to the door of the hide. Rory saw them into seats and strapped himself into his console, stabbing at a button to produce the sustained roar which had so startled the unicorns when he arrived. The Bug rumbled backwards and pivoted neatly before jolting forward, daintily – for her bulk – avoiding a clump of gorse.

"Brilliant!" the Doctor hung over the side, peering down "We must be ten feet up! What powers it – her? Device cubes?"

Rory checked their heading on a compass and pulled back slightly on the steering, making the roar go up in pitch. "She's quite heavy on power " he shouted back over the noise "so the Device makes special long-life balls for her. The basic engine is clockwork, so at worst if we ran out of power we could wind her manually but with Device power she can do thirty five miles an hour."

At that point they cleared the gorse and reached open ground and as if to prove herself the Bug leapt forward. Rory quickly raised the bubble dome to windscreen height and realigned the cab so the windscreen was first into the wind, swiveling his console to match. The passenger seats swiveled as the cab did, so that they were still facing forward, which made Donna catch nervously at one of the grab rails bolted round the interior. They lurched heavily over a rocky outcrop but the seats, each poised on a heavy spring, only rocked slightly, enough to make her swallow convulsively and wonder how upset Rory would be if she was sick in his precious vehicle.

"My beauty." Rory patted the red casing fondly "Very nearly the fastest thing on the island – the train can do forty, but my Bug can go anywhere, and cross very nearly any ground."

"Yeah, that train" Donna tightened her grip as the Bug tilted sideways at an alarming angle. "Why didn't we take that?"

"Only gets to New Amsterdam at twelve." The Doctor grinned at her pale face, obviously thoroughly enjoying himself. "The eleven o'clock start for the arraignment was probably deliberate, to stop all of Riddance pitching up and causing trouble." He swiveled his chair to look back the way they came, and reached across to tap her arm and point back.

"Look" he shouted merrily "The unicorns are following!" Two adults were cantering easily behind but even as Donna reluctantly swiveled they dropped to a trot and stopped, falling rapidly behind. "Does that mark the edge of their territory?" he called to Rory, who shook his head and expertly steered the edge of an eroded water channel.

"No." Rory raised his own voice "They don't really have a limit, but they're quite territorial, and they've made the area where the gorse is treated their base. Mrs. B treats about a ten mile radius every spring."

"Hmmm." The Doctor said thoughtfully and lapsed into a reverie, his chin on his fist and his elbow on the edge of the cab so he could stare out. Donna, once she was sure she wasn't going to be sick, started enjoying herself. The breeze of their passage blew her hair back and stopped the sun-drenched cab from being too hot, and she started laughing aloud as the Bug took streams, scrub, and the piled remains of a very old stone wall in its sturdy progress.

Rory, as always, was a good guide, at one point detouring up a small hill so he could point out the lagoon where the shaft used to end. Seen from above it was utterly peaceful and beautiful, so clear that several large dolphin-like shapes were silhouetted clearly against the white sands at the bottom as they swam in lazy pursuit of the silvery flashes of a small school of fish.

"Normally, any other time of year, there'd be people swimming or on the beaches, but honey month, of course, the dolphins have it to themselves."

"Dolphin dolphins? You mean, from Earth? I thought all the fish went out to sea?" Donna was puzzled and Rory started the Bug again.

"We've got to go or we'll be late, but I promise you, if you stay a while, I'll bring you back and you can meet your - ah - dolphin dolphins from Earth. They come back to give birth in the lagoon, because it's safe and sheltered. Look, Doc, Donna, over there – " he pointed towards the far side of the island where a smudge in the far distance was, he explained, the cliffs of the mainland.

"They look really close on a clear day like this, but there's a channel about forty miles across between the island and the mainland" he shouted over the roar as the Bug scrambled back en route "those cliffs force the rain clouds up. Lucky for us, because it means the mainland beyond is effectively desert for miles inland, completely unpopulated. I don't know whether the reptiles would have swum across to the island but it does mean they're not even around to see it."

" You talk like you've been there?" Donna was curious and he nodded, grinning.

"I told you my granddad used to take us up before the fuel ran out? Only ever at sundown, so we wouldn't bump into any Rocs, but that still gave us about two hours light so we swept across a couple times. Desert for about eight miles, you could see it ending in scrub and getting progressively greener but we stayed near the coast not to attract attention. One time we followed up a scrubby little river to quite a big body of water and saw some pretty big lizards scrambling into the water when they heard us. I was looking through glasses and it was hard to judge size with nothing familiar to compare it to, but I'd guess all of ten feet long. My granddad reckoned crocodiles of some kind. I dream of going back for a better, longer look. Hey, does that weird box of yours fly as well, or just whiz through space?"

Donna had a sudden vivid memory of her first meeting with the Doctor and how the TARDIS had tumbled through the sky behind her robot-driven taxi. "Oh, it flies. Like a duck with bricks on its wings! But it does fly."

"Well, when all this is over – " Rory's voice trailed off as he stared into the sky. "Doctor?"

"I see it." The Doctor said calmly. "Better close the bubble. I suppose we're beyond the Device's range by now?"

Donna looked from one to the other and then belatedly into the sky. Very far above them an eagle was circling, and she felt suddenly chilled as the windshield whirred up and over their heads to click home. That wasn't an eagle.

"Well, now you see why the Bug is so big." Rory was matching the Doctor's calm. "The idea was to look indigestible. She's red for the same reason, to look poisonous. I should tell you, Rocs have been known to snatch up runabouts as if they were take-away containers. In Riddance people could jump free without being killed by the fall, but that's why nobody uses their runabouts during daylight in honey month."

"Well, so far so good" the Doctor was squinting up through the bubble "It hasn't dropped any further. It's so high it's hard to judge, it may not have spotted us at all?"

"Hard to see what else it could have seen." Rory's mouth was set grimly "We're a good twenty miles from the unicorns and every other living creature, even as small as a hen, stays under the trees during honey month.

"It may have dropped to have a closer look at us, but if it's watching the Riddance unicorns the Device can cope. There wouldn't be anything visible in New Amsterdam, from what you've told me?"

"Normally not." The Bug groaned as Rory coaxed more speed from it. "But with the hearing – and there's always some activity, people can't just stay inside for a month, they take their chances dashing from cover to cover. Our teenagers have the Portal animals to distract them but youngsters generally are a rule unto themselves. I know, I was as bad as any of them in my time. Talking of the Portal - " he fumbled under the instruments to come up with a radio and spoke urgently into it. "Rory calling the hide, Rory calling the hide, over"

There was a long pause and then a startled youthful voice "This is Lee at the hide, over?"

"We're being tracked by a circling Roc, I repeat, a circling Roc" Rory kept his voice calm. "Can you spook the herd, make them canter round to attract it? Over."

"I - I hope so." Lee sounded doubtful "We've spent ten years getting them to accept us –"

"Do it. But keep under cover! That should test your ingenuity. Over." Rory replaced the radio and met the Doctor's calm gaze. "What?" he said defensively "All planes had them? I just reverse-engineered my granddad's."

"Very ingenious" agreed the Doctor. "Are we stopping, to look less interesting?"

"I thought under those trees" Rory pointed ahead and all three held their breath as the Bug, at top speed, jolted and scrambled towards the haven. It finally charged in under the canopy with a mighty crackling and rustling and the complete destruction of one unfortunate sapling. Rory whirred the bubble back and both men jumped down to hurry back to the edge of the copse. Donna didn't need any telling to stay behind and hugged herself miserably. There were times when she felt the Doctor was just a magnet for bad things to happen, they never seemed to arrive somewhere, relax for a day or two, then leave. Arrests, sulking pre-historic machines and now gigantic flying carnivores were just par for the course.

"It worked" the Doctor derailed her train of thought as he clambered back into view, smiling reassuringly. "Biggest thing on wings I've seen, even at this distance, and quick! Dropped like a stone, but it hasn't risen again so Rory's got another toy to play with."

"Chance would be a fine thing." Rory muttered as he followed the Doctor over the side and climbed into his console. "Bet the town won't even let me near it. Do you really think there'll be others?"

"Standard hunting pattern with big birds." The Doctor shrugged. "They watch each other and if one drops, the others will come closer to see what's happening. I don't think we should move just yet."

"Okay." Rory said easily, and patted Donna on her knee, peering into her white face. "You're not scared, duchess? This is nothing – remember the spider pumpkins I told you about? Well, the occasional animated pumpkin scuttling around is one thing, but it got really scary when pumpkin plants started growing wild in a cemetery, and nobody realised how deep their roots were sinking. This was, oh, six or seven years ago, but people still don't dare open their doors on Halloween in case it's happened again, and the person standing outside isn't a person at all, but a pumpkin copy of someone they once loved. One poor woman was so distraught at having had to chop the arms and legs off her pumpkin husband that she never recovered, and to this day she's confined to a mental asylum. On Halloween they have to give her an axe, or she goes berserk. She sits the whole night facing the door, the axe across her lip, staring without blinking at the door the whole night through".

"Do you know, that reminds me in an odd way of a world I came across once?" The Doctor looked from one to the other of them. "It was devastated by a war which left only a handful of survivors and an atmosphere so poisoned that just breathing was a struggle. That world also had an indigenous kind of pumpkin plant, and for years the people had used the plants to keep their injured or sick alive until a healer could get to them. The plants had gigantic pods, and anyone put in a pod became virtually part of the plant, in a kind of perfect vegetable stasis, where the plant delivered food and air to the occupant – who was in deep hibernation – and absorbed their carbon dioxide and body wastes in return. The effect is so extraordinary that even near death a person can last up to a year in the pod as though only a few hours had passed. The survivors decided their best bet was to go into a thousand year hibernation in the pods, and they've asked me to wake them at the end of the period, by which time their planet should be completely rejuvenated. It's a great responsibility, but also something of an honour, don't you think?"

"Yeah, but – " Donna looked blankly at him "Why didn't you just jump one thousand years into the future and get it all done in one day?"

Rory drummed his fingers on his steering wheel, then looked across at the Doctor soberly. "I'll withdraw my animated vegetables if you'll concede the pods?"

The Doctor bit his lip, then started to laugh. Donna punched his arm, hard. "It's like traveling with a pair of five year-olds" she scolded "honestly, Doctor, I've never known you to tell fibs before, it's all Rory's bad influence" with a smack up Rory's head. He flung up his hands in self-defence, roaring with laughter.

"Oi, don't damage the driver! We'd better step on it or we'll be late – " he smiled at Donna and very daringly put a gentle finger under her mutinous chin. "Just trying to cheer you up, Duchess, it'll be okay, you're with Uncle Rory. I'll look after you!"

CHAPTER EIGHT

New Amsterdam was much bigger than Riddance – as befitted the oldest of all the towns – and as the Bug rumbled throatily down the wide tree-lined avenue, flanked by the town's main canal, Donna saw at least two arches leading into shopping squares similar to the Riddance one. Rory was making for a bigger building built on a natural rise, fronted by the first real garden Donna had seen. Not being a gardener herself she hadn't really noticed before but of course it made sense, if you lived alongside a creature somewhere between a slug and a locust, not to encourage it with grass and flowers towards your house.

By comparison this was almost a park, defiantly formal, with the air of something that exists because of the difficulty in maintaining it, a sort of two fingers up at nature. Rory squeezed his Bug into the only parking area large enough to accommodate it, with a single cautious upward glance. They were at the foot of the rise, with the entire park to cross, but the sky looked completely clear as they slid to the ground and hurried upwards. Donna looked eagerly from side to side as she trotted up the stairs between the two men. Twenty foot hedges were clipped to look like sailing ships. Elaborate wooden benches (bolted into the ground, she noticed) were set at different angles to enjoy different views. Most impressive were the flowerbeds, perfectly colour-graded rows of flowers and shrubs that were almost blue at the bottom all the way up to white, which flanked the long sloping stone steps to the top. As they climbed she became aware of pale faces at the windows of the buildings either side of the park, which seemed to be watching them intently. They were also being watched from the courthouse as they hurried up the steps to stop for a moment, puffing, at the top. The courthouse was largely of glass, fenced around with shipboard rails. There was an odd little portico in the front with porthole windows in the twirly style fancied by olde worlde pubs, which Donna thought maliciously was a bit twee for a town with such a high opinion of its superior taste.

The Doctor was introduced and taken away to some side office to meet his client and peers, and Rory caught her hand to pull her through the next set of doors. In the main building all nods to the past had been swept away – the space was octagonal, with huge glass windows overlooking all the surrounding countryside. Ahead of them was a low barrier, behind which all the seats, ranked from the ground up, faced the door as Rory and Donna entered.

The place was absolutely crowded but Rory, undeterred, led Donna through the little barrier and turned left towards the front row. Even here he was obviously well known but confined himself to nodding to acquaintances, and smiling gratefully as the other people in the front row of seats moved up to make room for them. Donna sat abruptly and looked around. Only the wall where they entered was solid, and had been paneled. A long and highly polished judges bench was suspended over the entrance doors with, to one side, an odd little turret jutting out of the paneling. A big clock above the turret showed there were still a few minutes to eleven o'clock , and Rory took it on himself to once more be her mentor while they waited, with his arm round her shoulders so that he could murmur into her ear.

"New Amsterdam is the legal centre of the whole country, this is where the Peacekeepers are based and every crime that can't be resolved at town level is referred here. There isn't generally much, every town's main problem is unruly teenagers and that's always handled at town level. Anyone murders a teenager, that's different! Mrs. B will be in that" he pointed to the turret "for the whole of the proceedings. That bench there, they can have up to four judges sitting on any one case depending on its complexity, there'll be at least two today. We're sitting behind where the Doctor will be with the local Riddance representative, and over that side you'll see the Peacekeeper representatives. Pretty much the same as your system? We're always told it's based on it."

"Well – " Donna was trying to take it all in "We've got different systems for different countries. This isn't much like anything I've seen on telly, LA Law and that sort of thing, or the only time I was in Magistrates court. I suppose they've sort of combined them all. I take it the Peacekeepers must be the prosecutors but what did you mean, the Riddance representative?"

"He's called in when anyone from Riddance breaks the law. There's one representative for every town living in New Amsterdam and they decide whether crimes caused here by someone from their town should be processed and treated on the spot or the criminal sent back to his home town. When that isn't an option – like this time, when the crime is considered a national one and the criminal is brought here – the local representative is there to see fair play and be able to report back afterwards."

Donna nodded, it was a simple system which made sense. She was about to ask another question when a peremptory voice told them to rise, and the main players came in. Mrs. B was brought in from the left, escorted by guards - no, peacekeepers, Donna remembered - to the dock and could be heard climbing up its little steps. For a moment she appeared at the top, then sat, almost out of sight but still able to hear everything being said. The prosecuting peacekeepers, two solemn men and a severe-looking woman, swept in from a doorway to the right of the judge's box and settled themselves at their table. The Doctor, walking in step behind them with a worried-looking young man, winked cheekily at her as he moved into position. Last of all, with pompous dignity, a door opened in the paneling behind the judges box and they filed in. Donna glanced up at Rory in surprise as a third, then fourth, judge appeared and saw a muscle jump in his cheek as they all noisily sat down again.

"Four judges, that's really bad?" She put her hand on his and he turned his to clasp her fingers.

"It isn't great." He admitted softly "But on the good side, it's definitive. No-one can say afterwards that this wasn't representative of the whole country."

The severe woman stood and moved to a small marble plinth directly under the judges box, turning to face the crowd.

"Judges of this court, ladies and gentlemen." She had a clear voice with, Donna noticed with surprise, a slight Portuguese accent. "The Peacekeepers have been asked to formulate a case against Mrs. Beulah Beaton of Riddance, and to present our findings today for inspection. We find that Mrs. Beaton has used a machine of unknown origin, known colloquially as the Device, to open a shaft to another world and has brought through creatures that are both alien and dangerous. We find also that this shaft has also attracted the attention of the Rocs from the neighbouring mainland, with the result that Roc attacks have become frequent and more than one hundred people have died in the last few years – more than previously had been snatched in our entire recorded history."

Rory's strong fingers crushed Donna's hand, and she saw the Doctor's shoulders twitch with surprise. The crowd rustled and stirred, then went silent again as she continued "As Mrs. Beaton has persistently refused to shut down the Device, the charges are being made at national level. Speaking for her is the Riddance townsman, Nathan Stander, and also the Doctor." This produced a much more marked stirring in the crowd and one of the judges leant forward over her bench – it seemed this was news to her too.

"The Doctor from thirty years ago?" She stared at him through half glasses. "Nonsense, he's far too young!"

"Notwithstanding" the severe woman seemed almost reluctant. "He has proved his identity to us. I believe he – ah – regenerates."

"Nice trick" the judge muttered, and a tiny ripple of laughter ran round the room. "Well, then, I move we call the Doctor for his initial response to the charges?"

"Thank you, Judges, Peacekeepers, ladies and gentleman" the Doctor bounded to the marble plinth and beamed round at everyone. "Some of you will remember me from when I was last here to help close down the shaft link to Earth." He paused to let that sink in.

"On behalf of Mrs. B I am going to convince you that the shaft in Riddance isn't a shaft but a Portal, which means the creatures that come through are able to cross back to their own world whenever they want. They also, by the very nature of a Portal link, can't interact with this world and therefore aren't a danger. I've been caught on the hop with the other charge, because we weren't aware the Roc attacks have become so frequent, but I can promise you they aren't attracted by the Device. If they were, we'd have seen a lot more Rocs in Riddance, where instead the last honey month attack was four years ago. Well, apart from today." He added slightly reluctantly, but nobody was looking surprised, so Donna guessed they already knew. After all, they'd been pretty close to New Amsterdam when the Roc dropped down toward them.

"Thank you Doctor" The oldest judge rumbled. "Peacekeeper Rody?"

The oldest of the Peacekeepers took the Doctor's place on the plinth and cleared his throat portentously.

"It is a matter of public record that we were brought to this planet as a food source for an unknown species, and only by the grace of God were able to survive and flourish. It has been reported to the Peacekeepers that the accused has opened this shaft – or Portal – to the very creatures we have dreaded all along. It is the demand of the country, as represented by me in this courtroom, that the accused close down the – Portal – and dismantle the Device. We believe the above will go some way to reducing the Roc attacks, but the entire country has been put at permanent and ongoing risk now that the Rocs have learned they have a month when they can attack with impunity."

There was an angry mutter from the crowd and the Doctor bounced up again. "I know it's not my turn" he said forcefully "but I think I can cut through a lot of time and misunderstandings if you let me just have my say before everyone starts getting all worked up and excited?"

"Go on then" the woman judge said gruffly. She obviously fancied herself as something of a wit, the type whose court reports are dotted with the word 'laughter' in brackets. As the offended Peacekeeper opened his mouth to protest she went on "I'm all for cutting through hours of waffle if we can. Give over, do, and let the Doctor have his say."

"Righty oh" The Doctor, knowing he had a tendency to gabble when he was explaining things, looked down to gather his thoughts, then turned his head slowly and deliberately to include everyone in the room. "I'm a Time Lord. I travel back and forth through space and time. About thirty years ago, when a race called the Gangions, the intergalactic equivalent of your Peacekeepers, learned of the shaft between Earth and its twin, your world, New Earth, they invited me along because I look enough like a human to not startle people who've been living for generations under the expectation of attack."

He took a sip of water and looked around, completely serious now. "The thing is, you were trying to rationalize what had happened to you against human expectations. Some of you, back then, believed you were trapped in a kind of zoo, being maintained for the viewing pleasure of an alien race, and that the constant stream of fish pouring through the shaft into the Lagoon was to feed you. Others believed – and obviously still do – that you were yourselves a food source. No-one seems to have realized the significance of where the shaft brought you. To a lagoon. A safe, virtually enclosed body of water only a few fathoms deep. Even in the coldest New Earth winter the water was at Bermuda temperatures, with a narrow channel to the sea, part of an island opposite the very safest and least populated part of the mainland."

He looked at a sea of puzzled faces and smiled slightly. "On Earth, the dinosaur reign ended as a combination of freak circumstances and they were virtually wiped out. Sharks, crocodiles, some creatures survived, or evolved from the survivors, but mammals were freed to evolve too and they multiplied, spread, mutated and eventually produced humans who rapidly – speaking in evolutionary terms – took over as dominant species of the planet. On Earth, humans evolved towards the end of a long chain of evolution on land."

"Here on New Earth, the reptile reign has never ended. Some small mammals have evolved – certainly here on these islands - but despite the protection of the clickits – or perhaps because of it – there's been little evolutionary progress on land. On this planet, the intelligent mammals never left the sea".

"Do you see? In this world's ocean there is a dominant race so advanced they could open a shaft to the nearest life-supporting planet – your Earth – and transport Earth's sea creatures from Earth's oceans to the safety of the lagoon and, ultimately, into the seas here." He paused, but nobody stirred.

"They didn't anticipate a intelligent life form above the sea – nothing in their experience let them expect that a land-based mammal would sail, and eventually even fly, into their shaft. They had never anticipated it could happen, and they didn't even realize it had happened, because humans splashed their way out of the lagoon to dry land, they didn't swim out to sea and they didn't let the current carry them out. I clearly remember reading when I was last here that you never tried to portage a ship across the rocks, or rebuild one on the seaward side, because of the sea monsters you could see from the shore. You were right in part, they certainly were waiting to see what the shaft had brought and whether it would be friend or meal. Certainly the seas of this planet are teeming with some incredible creatures but those – sea monsters – were no cleverer than giant mammals usually are. They never noticed that this particular island had gained a population. When the Gangions spoke to the Sea Lords I can tell you they were horrified at the damage unwittingly done by their shaft and asked the Gangions to put it right."

"As you know, nearly everyone here chose to stay. You weren't told of the Sea Lords because it wouldn't have helped the paranoia of that time and because the Sea Lords had never infringed on the island and never would. You were, there's no easy way of saying this, brought here by accident. The shaft was created to bring the denizens of Earth's seas here, to the new Eden."

There was a long silence when he finished, broken by one voice saying, quite audibly, "Bloody hell!" and then a roar of conversation. The senior judge banged his gavel testily and the room finally quieted.

"On the charge" the Doctor looked down at his scribbled notes "of the Portal being a danger to life on the island, I do not believe that it is. But I'd like to ask Mrs. B a couple of questions?"

Her pale face appeared at the front of the dock. "Of course, Doctor."

"Why did you open it?"

"We had no efficient way of storing food. You see – if I can explain - I wasn't born on the island, the shaft brought me when I was on my honeymoon, sailing off Bermuda." Her voice, thin at first, strengthened as she went on.

"We thought life here was wonderful, but there were some advances on Earth there was no way of duplicating here, such as refrigeration, and freezing. Like everyone else we buy ice blocks every winter from the north, but the iceboxes were always depleted by harvest time, when we were trying to store food for the winter. When I started to work with the Device I learned about timelocking – how time could be locked on anything, that if we tapped into another dimension there's an automatic reaction to protect both dimensions, to stop all interaction? We could coax through some inhabitants of that dimension, limit their feeding area – the Device knew how to do that – and put anything that we needed timelocked, into their path." She sought out Rory in the crowd, and their eyes met. She smiled faintly.

"That idea was revolutionized by a clever young inventor in our town" she went on quietly. "Timelocking became our greatest export product. But at the time I saw it as a way of storing as much of every harvest as possible, and perhaps the animals would be interesting enough to attract visitors from other towns. I knew they would be completely protected by the Portal – nothing from our dimension can touch them and conversely nothing from that dimension can touch us. Any attempts are automatically timelocked."

"Not true!" a voice shouted from the crowd "children have been snatched!"

The Doctor nodded and looked up again "There are people who believe a boy was snatched and taken through the Portal by werewolves."

"No, that's not possible." Her steady voice didn't waver. "I know the boy you mean and I know he's vanished, but he couldn't have been taken by werewolves. They've long since learned that timelocked prey is no more use to them than a piece of coal, and they have absolutely no interest in taking away anything they can't eat." Another faint smile. "I'm prepared to let myself be hunted by werewolves in front of witnesses to demonstrate."

The Doctor nodded. "Mrs. B, I've been told this lad wanted to go through the Portal. What would have happened to him, if he did indeed go through?"

"Because we opened it, their protection extends either side. If he went through, the first creature that was endangered by his presence would have triggered the timelock. He could be a mile inside, or three feet, completely safe but beyond our reach. Anyone trying to rescue him would be caught the same way."

"And could you tell the court, is there no way of canceling the protection?"

"We could –" she was silent for a moment, obviously thinking about it, and the crowd stayed silent too. "We could close the Portal, with creatures this side, and hope that it was re-opened from that side, which would reverse the nature of the protection. If that happened, anything that came near us would be timelocked, but we could move freely. However, there's no guarantee that world is even capable of opening a Portal to us."

"Thank you, Mrs. B" the Doctor turned seriously to look out at the crowd again. "If the boy has gone through the Portal – which all the volunteers have expressly been warned never to do – I believe there is a chance of rescuing him, and I will try it after this Hearing. However, that doesn't affect the here and now, because it wasn't a Portal creature that took him through and that's the issue we're debating today."

He looked for the first time directly at the Peacekeepers. "To take another shortcut – can I ask what you were intending to do with Mrs. B at the end of this hearing if you'd found her guilty? You probably can't close the Portal without her, or force her to close it or scrap the Device. Both work without her, so holding her here wouldn't achieve your object. You couldn't put her to death – the Device wouldn't permit it. And I don't think the Device understands jail anyway. The thing is, it isn't capable of feeling ambition but it does have almost limitless power, and it is designed to protect people. You couldn't dismantle it without first convincing it that it was harming people rather than protecting them, which you couldn't do because it isn't. If you threatened to damage – as it would understand it - Mrs. B it would neutralize anyone who tried, hopefully not in a disfiguring or permanent way. There's another thing. I don't know how many other people can communicate with it but I know Mrs. B has never abused her control over it. Could you be so sure that anyone else in Riddance would be as reliable? Take Mrs. B to the farthest point of the island, out of the picture, and you could have the Device controlled by a young and ambitious man with a very active imagination. Would that be better?"

Donna glanced involuntarily at Rory who threw his head back in a delighted roar of laughter. "I'd be Emperor of the island in ten years" he shouted gleefully. "What you trying to do, doc, get me lynched?" There was a wave of slightly nervous laughter, which the judges quelled with vigorous gavel action, and the Doctor grinned at him.

"You couldn't, because the Device itself would be repelled by excessive ambition. But it is best managed by someone as cool and clear-headed as Mrs. B. Tell me, Mrs. B, would you be prepared to work with consultants from other towns?"

"I've suggested it more than once" she said calmly and he nodded.

"I know you have. I think it's time for the Peacekeepers to nominate representatives."

"What, to help Riddance get richer?" one man said sourly and there was a ripple of muttering. The Doctor shook his head patiently.

"The Device could – and would – help you all. You just don't begin to understand how much help it could be, if nothing else-" He was interrupted by a peacekeeper bursting through the closed doors.

"There's a Roc!" he yelled "It's got two kids pinned under a bench!" Through the sudden tumult Donna looked automatically to the Doctor, and saw him, after one startled glance out of the window, lift his arm to attract Mrs. B, who had stood up in the dock. As soon as she looked at him he closed his eyes and tapped a finger to his head. She stared – as did Donna – but then half-frowned as though concentrating and Donna suddenly realized he was asking her to read his mind. After a few seconds she nodded, closed her own eyes and sank back in her chair. Fresh screams distracted Donna, and through the window she saw another Roc gliding in, to perch on the roof of one of the flanking houses. Rory, who like the rest of the crowd had sprung to his feet, swore under his breath and vaulted over the little barrier to run towards the entrance, the Doctor taking off after him and Donna in automatic hot pursuit. He'd already seen what the others saw as they reached the portico – the first Roc had succeeded in tearing away half the bench and was now trying to stab its huge beak into the gap. Even over the tumult behind them she could hear the children screaming as the Doctor caught her arm and stopped her following Rory as he pelted into the open, his coat flaring, shouting a wordless challenge. Even as the Roc reared up in surprise he flung himself forward to land on the wreckage of the bench, his hands locking onto the frame. The Roc pecked fiercely at him and Donna could have sworn its eyes crossed at the jarring impact. The one on the roof rocked forward, intent, and half lifted its wings just as another swooped in low.

"Exactly what I suspected" the Doctor said conversationally to Donna as they edged their way back inside "Just like vultures – they watch each other. One drops, the others rush to see what it's found. This lot saw the Riddance one immobilized so they didn't follow it down, but like we just heard in there, they've had pickings before in New Amsterdam."

The third Roc flapped overhead as the Doctor pushed her slightly behind him, the sound of its wings like wet sheets on a windy line, driving the foul stench of its carrion diet to where she cowered back under cover, but the Doctor was smiling as he stared up at the sky. Which was – splitting? A section of blue seemed to peel away to reveal an almost apricot colour, rapidly framing another Roc.

No – not a Roc. This was huge, with wings, but unlike their odd kite-like shape it had four legs, and a tail, like a giant winged lizard or even –

"A dragon?" she said breathlessly. "A bloody DRAGON?"

"Oh, yes" he said proudly. "Mrs. B really is incredibly good."

The dragon flapped its wings like a pistol shot and the heads of the three Rocs snapped upwards as they screeched a ragged challenge. All three sprang up towards the gliding dragon as it spiraled ever lower and even as they reached it Donna realized what was going to happen. One surged for the dragon's tail which flicked lightly, whipping it across the head. The Roc instantly stiffened and plummeted out of the sky. The second moved to attack it from above and the third went straight for the dragon's head, to be met by a gust of barely-visible white flame. It fell heavily – directly onto the bench where Rory still lay protecting the children. Even as Donna screamed the third Roc crashed to earth on its outstretched stiffened wings, rocking to a halt as it glared sightlessly into the sky.

The dragon touched down lightly and folded its wings in what had become an eerie and breathless silence. It looked round with interest, sniffed at the nearest Roc and raised a stumpy foreleg to poke delicately at a hedge, with a claw longer than Donna's arm.

"Well, of course we now have to get rid of the dragon" the Doctor conceded. "Any ideas?"

In part two the action soon switches from an all-island affair to a very personal attack from a deadly rival Donna didn't even know she had. The desperate race to save her will have the Doctor and their new friends rushing across to the reptile-dominated mainland, and an introduction to a bizarre race of creatures ...

©E J Lamprey January 2013


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